


Magic, Through the Ages

by apollos



Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Alternate Universe - Magic, Depression, F/M, M/M, Roman Catholicism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 13:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3211214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can take the kid out of South Park, but you can't take the South Park out of the kid. Even if they're a wizard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wands I: The Boys

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this started out as "what if Stan and Kyle were sorted into different houses and had angst about it" and turned into "let's flesh out a whole universe." This is purely a self-indulgent pet project; don't expect it to have a plot or anything silly like that. It's just one-shots, in the same universe, about different characters. I have some ideas for some other pairings and plot lines and whatnot, but this is still a primarily Style fic. I'll add more characters and pairings as we go along.

**STAN**

Stan and his family make a special trip to Diagon Alley to purchase Stan's wand before the beginning of the school year, as they had done for Shelley a few years back. Stan had wanted to bring Kyle along, but his parents said no, citing that selecting a wand was a special experience in a young boy's life that they don't want to muck up by bringing the ruckus that comes along with young boys into it. "Besides," Stan's mother says as she grabs ahold of Stan in preparation for the Floo network (despite Stan protesting that he was old enough to take it on his own and had been doing so for the past two years, popping to his uncle's house often) "I want to do some shopping, and that would bore poor little Kyle to death."

For this reason, Stan is sullen as he walks into the wand shop. He's been here before with his sister so it's not exciting as he imagines it would be for some kids. The man behind the counter, some Ollivander or the other, greets him with a smile.

"I remember you," he says. "Stan Marsh, eh? Ready for your wand, now, going to Hogwarts next year?"

Stan, sullen and now sort of shy, nods and gravitates closer to his mother.

"Well, let's get started then."

It takes about five or so wands until the perfect one is placed in Stan's hand. Eleven inches, a gorgeous English Oak with a core of unicorn hair. Wind starts to whip around Stan, and with it comes a scent like the meadows of his childhood, wildflowers and dirt. Stan hears his mother makes a choked little sound behind him, but he is too interested in the pretty lights that are popping in front of his eyes in beautiful blues and greens, browns and reds. He reaches out with his other hand to touch one, smiling. Though magic has been in his world for all his life, this is the first time that he thinks he has an understanding of what it means to be a wizard. He only wishes Kyle were beside him to experience it, too.

**KYLE**

The Broflovskis, too, take Kyle to Diagon Alley, though at a later date than Stan. Kyle has spent the past week admiring Stan's wand although Stan has not been allowed to use it. It sits on a shelf in his room, patient and so very  _Stan_. Though Kyle wanted to go with Stan, the excitement of finding a wand that is so  _his_ is hard to ignore. His parents insist they take a Muggle train  _for_   _fun_ , as they have a different definition of fun than Kyle does, and even the wails of his toddler brother Ike do not dampen his spirits.

Kyle doesn't know what he was expecting when he walks into the wand shop. Immediate bangs and whistles, a wand flying out of a box and to him, maybe. He's never been here before and is disappointed to find some cramped, dusty place, a man about his father's age leaning lazily on the counter. His parents had boasted the quality of Ollivander wands, and well, Kyle is not impressed. He cannot help but scowl.

"Somebody's impatient," the man laughs. He sits up straight. "Sheila, Gerald! I haven't seen you both in so long."

"Too long," Kyle's father says. He bows a little, then straightens the wizard's cap he insists on wearing on his head. "Kyle's going to Hogwarts in the fall, and, well, it's time we get him a wand."

"I remember his birth announcement," the man says, smiling and looking wistful. "Who's this one?" He gestures to Ike, wrapped up in Kyle's mother's arms, now sleeping and looking younger than he is.

"Our adopted son—" Kyle's mother starts, but Kyle, feeling some strange invigoration, bursts out:

"Can I get my wand already?"

The man raises his eyebrows and, wordlessly, walks over to one of the tall shelves crammed with boxes. He selects a wood that does not catch Kyle's fancy at first: it is longer than Stan's and much thinner, fifteen inches and laurel with a dragon heartstring core, according to the man.

Yet as soon as the wand comes near Kyle, the invigoration that began in him earlier starts to consolidate and vibrate in his veins. When Kyle wraps his fingers around the wand, he let out a little yelp. A flash of lightning seems to rise from the ground and disappear in an instant. He is left feeling like every feeling he has ever felt in his life is coming to him all at once, wrapping around him, and he knows that as Stan's wand is his, this one is  _his_.

**KENNY**

Finding Diagon Alley proves to be the most difficult component to this entire venture. There's a pouch jangling full of coins in Kenny's pocket, Hogwarts' welfare for its poorer, Muggle-born students, but Kenny is on his own and confused. He didn't even think magic  _existed_  a month ago, though he knew something was up when it seemed it was impossible for him to die. He ends up asking a friendly-looking old wizard hanging around the Leaky Cauldron to get him into Diagon Alley. The man taps a code onto some bricks and what will soon become Kenny's world blossoms into view, aweing him.

Because Kenny has always associated wands with magic, he decides to purchase his wand first. The wizard he asked for help has vanished (literally), leaving Kenny to stumble through the woven cobblestone paths of a place with all these exciting, distracting,  _amazing_ , smells and sights until he finds a sort of shabby looking little building called Ollivander's. He pushes the door open.

"Hello," says the man behind the counter. "How may I help you?"

"I need a wand?" Kenny says. Diagon Alley had been so overwhelming, but this building he is in now is quiet, peaceful, all warm wood and coziness.

"Do you really?" The man lifts a single eyebrow; Kenny's always wished he could do that.

"Yeah." Kenny pulls the list of school supplies from his pocket and presents it to the man. "I'm a Muggle-born, I think you call them? But I know I need a wand."

The man nods and leaves the counter, going over to where there are several long boxes holding what Kenny presumes to be wands. He produces one, long and light, and hands it to Kenny. He swishes it.

"Is something supposed to happen?" he asks, dumbly. "Do I just buy this one?"

"No, no," the man says, tapping his chin. He takes the wand back. Kenny's still confused, but all of that seems to clear up when the man hands him the next wand: twelve inches on the dot, cypress, phoenix feather.

No swishing required, the wand seems to summon clouds and a ball of light that Kenny thinks is a miniature sun to hang above his head. Amazed, Kenny holds the wand tighter, and the clouds break to shower him with golden sparks that do not burn but tickle, eliciting laughter. Kenny waves the wand around, almost prancing in the place, watching as little frogs and flowers seem to squeeze through the tip of the wood and just pop into existence, feathers from exotic birds and smooth pebbles from faraway beaches littering the creaky floor of the shop.

"That's enough," the man behind the counter says, putting a hand on Kenny's wrist. The magic ceases, everything the wand had summoned disappearing, and Kenny is too entranced to frown. "Cypress—it was a gamble, but I was right, wasn't I?"

"What's so great about cypress?" Kenny wouldn't care if the wand was made out of the wood from the anemic tree in his front yard.

"Cypress wands choose very great wizards with very great potential," the man explains gently, getting on Kenny's level. "Combined with the phoenix feather, well—it's a rare combination. One that I am honored to give to you. Free of charge."

**CARTMAN**

Cartman is the only one that does not go to Ollivander's. Instead, he and his mother go to the little wand shop in their small town that mostly does repairs and tuning, selling the occasional accessory. In the back there are a few wands. The shop is by no means respectable, but Cartman is quiet for the promise that they'll get ice cream from his favorite place if he doesn't complain too much. The wand shop, called Tully's, is in the same little shopping complex as the ice cream parlor, which sells ice cream with enchanted edible toppings that dance around like ice-skaters on snow; he likes to cannibalize them.

"Your father would be so proud," his mother says when they're outside the store, misty-eyed and straightening the collar of his coat. Cartman is a pureblood, something he would take pride in if his mother wasn't a Squib. His father was some hotshot Quidditch player that sired, like, sixteen bastard children or something, then died in a freak accident. Cartman does not care whether his father would be proud or not; he cares about getting this wand and getting ice cream, in that order. Nobody knows this is where he's getting his wand; he'll just tell everybody he got it from Ollivander's, that it was the first one pulled down and he made the building  _explode_.

In reality, he goes with the only wand in the entire shop that he has even the slightest magical reaction to. Cartman is happy with its impressive length (sixteen inches) and core (dragon heartstring), but the wood (fir) is unexciting. When he waves the wand around a bit, weak sparks leak from the tip and he feels a kind of tug in the pit of his stomach. But this is the card that has been dealt to him and so he must make do with it for now; at least people will be awed by its length and sturdiness, and he can always get a better one at a later date when he has his own money and his mom allows him to travel outside of South Park.

The ice cream afterwards, though, is delicious, and Cartman eats twice the amount that his wand is worth.


	2. A Short History of Stan Marsh's Time at Hogwarts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very nervous about this installment! I've taken some liberties with the Harry Potter canon, most noticeably in regards to religion, and I also imagine this story to take place quite some time after Harry's stint in the wizarding world. I can get away with this by claiming that Hogwarts and the wizarding community itself is extremely steeped in tradition and sort of stuck in, like, 18th century ways, okay. I am also hesitant about my sorting decisions, which are true to how I see the characters; if you want to know why I put who where, just ask. Still, I am stupidly nervous about this.

**FIRST YEAR**

"It's not that bad, you know," Kyle is saying, sitting on a secluded windowsill in the left wing of the castle, a thick book splayed open on his lap. Stan is on the floor beneath him, playing absentmindedly with his old Quidditch set that Cartman would accuse him of being childish for if he caught him. "My parents were Slytherins and you like them."

Stan sighs. "My mom was a Hufflepuff," he says. "Dad went to muggle school."

"I know that, Stan." Kyle kicks at Stan's forehead, his beat-up sneaker poking out from underneath his robes. "Look, people have inter-house friendships all the time. Don't get so—weepy. About it." Kyle buries his nose back in his book; Stan pokes at one of the Quidditch players with his wand.

He hadn't expected to be in the same house as Kyle, not really. Maybe when he was five and they were indistinguishable, faces chubby and fingers dirty, their magic blossoming as Stan produced a flower out of thin air for Kyle (that he later found out he'd somehow summoned from the neighbor's garden twenty miles away) and Kyle turned Stan's hair a deep lilac (that his mom, in lieu of turning it back, cut all off, leaving little Stan with an awkward haircut for half a year). But as they've grown they've developed different personalities: there is a light in Kyle's eyes that Stan does not share, something green that makes him Slytherin, while Stan idolizes Quidditch players and, secretly, fairy tale princes, a passion that lays in his stomach and makes him Gryffindor. The outright animosity between the two houses is long dead, but you still get judged, somewhat, if you associate with one another.

"At least you're not in the same house as  _Cartman_ ," Kyle groans. Stan wakes from his thoughts. "I have to share a room with him for the next seven years! And Craig! It's terrible!"

"That's true," Stan says, and he means it. He gets up from the floor, pocketing his wand and his Quidditch set, and sits beside Kyle on the windowsill. "I just have Token and Clyde. They're not too bad."

"My only solace will be Wendy," Kyle groans, and Stan smiles at Kyle's use of the word  _solace_.

They sit like that on the windowsill for some time, together, Kyle reading snippets from his history book out loud while Stan daydreams about trying out for Quidditch next year and being hailed a hero.

Stan grows accustomed to the separation from Kyle, which is really no different from what he'd experienced as a kid in South Park, but he still wishes it were Kyle he could whisper to at midnight under the heavy tapestries on their dormitory beds instead of Token and Clyde. Hogwarts is for the most part how he expected it to be and Stan enjoys it, but there's a nagging little thing inside of him that makes him feel distant, flighty, and he gets in trouble a lot for zoning out during lessons. Kyle likes to chastise him about it, which is irritating, but any time with Kyle is precious time and so Stan tolerates his whispered lectures in the library and hushed admonitions by the lake.

Overall it is a common, but not bad for that, first year at Hogwarts.

**FIRST SUMMER**

Over the year, Stan and Kyle make friends with a Hufflepuff boy named Kenny who has a Northern accent and shabby, secondhand robes lined with strange patchwork. He's muggle-born but funny and great with magic, especially transfiguration. Together, the three of them conspire to prank Cartman, spilling enchanted liquid that smells foul for days on his favorite robes and stealing his precious cat and keeping it captive in the Astronomy tower. Stan feels bad about the pranks, sometimes, but he likes the way that Slytherin light comes out in Kyle's eyes while they devise and snicker about their latest plans. So, they invite Kenny down for the summer, and after some pressuring that no, he won't be a burden and that no, their families don't mind, Kenny comes to stay with the Marsh household.

Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Wendy are all from the same wizarding village, nestled in the hills of the countryside. South Park is a small and quiet place. Most of the families there come from long but unremarkable wizarding lines, except for Stan's father the Muggle and Kyle's family, who moved there after adopting another magical son from an anti-magic home to protect him from his parents; apparently there's some movement against magic in Canada and London was too obvious of a hiding place. Kyle speaks with a different, more southern and posh accent that Stan finds endearing (but just sometimes.)

Kenny is enamored with South Park, walking through the village streets and peering into the little shops. Stan and Kyle take him to all their favorite spots: the candy store that sells extra spicy sweets in the back, the little cave by the river where their magic has carved their names into the stone, the treehouse Stan's dad built from his own bare hands in Stan's backyard. This same tree house is where Stan has his first kiss that summer, among the buzzing of cicadas and lights of fireflies, with Wendy in the early evening. He expected it to be different and knows he disappoints Wendy when he tells her it was nice, but he'd like to not do it again and just stay friends.

Stan spends a lot of the summer training for Quidditch tryouts. He wants to be a Chaser; his dad, an avid fan, thought a Beater would be a manlier position, but Stan doesn't like the violence of it. Kyle practices alongside him but Stan can tell his heart isn't in it; Kenny is more enthusiastic but not very good. They both tell him he's sure to make the team, but as the days go by, Stan becomes so sick with nerves his mother brews him a calming tonic that he's forced to keep in his pocket. His little Quidditch set rests on his shelf, reminding him of his aspirations.

**SECOND YEAR**

Tryouts are held in the first few weeks of school; Stan makes the team, though he'd been sick for days and had eaten only ginger bark.

"I told you!" Kyle says, enveloping Stan in a hug after he gets the news. Stan's skin flushes.

Kenny appears from somewhere, as he has the habit of doing, beaming and clapping Stan on the back. "I did, too!" he says, like he's happy just to be near them.

The only other second year to make the Gryffindor team—and a team in general—is a girl named Bebe that Stan doesn't know all that well. She's from a posher wizarding community in the south; Wendy's become friends with her. Still, she comes up afterwards and congratulates Stan, too, and Stan congratulates her back. Kyle looks at her a little funnily.

"Dude," Stan says after she's walked back to the Gryffindor girls she hangs out with, "what was that about?"

"Oh, nothing," Kyle says, waving a hand. Stan grins; he thinks maybe Kyle's developed a crush on a real, actual, human girl. Stan was beginning to worry about him. "Let's go celebrate, yeah?"

"Yeah!" Kenny answers for Stan.

 _Celebrating_  turns into sneaking food from the kitchens (Kenny's pretty friendly with the house elves) and going out by the lake. It's a pleasant day, warm for this time of year, and they shed their robes and roll their pants up so they can dip their feet in the water. One of Kenny's friends, a smallish blond Hufflepuff that goes by Butters, joins them, and the kid is kind of annoying but kind of endearing, too, with his awkward Welsh accent. Down the shore and out of earshot Stan can see Clyde, who tried out for the team but didn't make it, sitting between Token, Craig and a Ravenclaw in their year Stan recognizes as Tweek Tweak, staring morosely in the water.

Three months down the road, while stumbling through asking Bebe on a date, the giant squid emerges from the water and wraps its tentacles around Clyde hard enough to leave sucker-shaped bruises on his arms. Stan is not there to see it, but he is there in the aftermath, spotting the squid's marks on Clyde's arms and hearing him cry a little to himself at night while Token tells him to  _shut up, it's okay, Merlin_. But before that takes place, Stan plays his first Quidditch game. It's a match against Hufflepuff; their Keeper is Gary Harrison, a year above Stan, and Stan manages to get in three goals. Gryffindor win by a landslide and the Hufflepuffs congratulate Stan afterwards, even Gary. Stan has a special sort of fondness for the Hufflepuffs, but he feels, somehow, that he is too impure to ever belong to them.

Over the course of his second year, dark feelings begin to brew inside of Stan. His anxiety about Quidditch never ceases and starts to spread to other areas. He skips classes complaining of stomachaches that aren't completely a lie far too often. Furthermore, as the winter months approach, he starts to feel empty. It's sort of like his magic has left him, his spells becoming weaker alongside his body. It's when his Quidditch Captain tells him he needs to see the nurse or else he might lose his spot on the team, he's starting to do so poorly, that Stan starts to wonder about late on-set Squibness, if that's even a thing (he wonders if Cartman's mother would know, then feels bad about that.)

"Oh, honey," the nurse laughs as he tells her about this. She reminds him of his mom, who's a Healer at their local clinic, that naturally nurturing type. "You're not a Squib, dear. You're depressed. It's no big deal; we can give you a potion that you can take nightly and fix that right up. Do you have trouble going to sleep at night?"

"Yeah," Stan mumbles. He's thinking about the weekly letters from his father on his bedside table. They all inquire about Stan's Quidditch progress and Stan is always embarrassed to see the family owl flying in at breakfast, even when it comes with the monthly goodie box from his mother (that Kenny gets the most of.) He rereads the letters obsessively when he can't sleep. "How'd you know?"

"Kids like you often do, sweetheart," she says. Stan feels patronized. "This potion will help with that, too. Here, I'll give you a bottle, and you come back in three months, okay? I'll bewitch it for you so it looks like something else." A wave of the wand and the label changes from  _Antidepressant Potion_ to  _Sleeping Aide._ Stan thinks the  _e_ on the end of  _aide_ is pretentiously rustic, but maybe Token will compliment him on it."This way the other boys won't bother you about it. Take a mouthful every night before bed like I said, alright?"

"Alright." Stan takes the bottle from her and slides it into his shoulder bag.

The potion works, becoming a staple of Stan's routine, and by the time Clyde is crying in bed about what becomes known as the Squid Incident, Stan starts to feel cheerful again. His Quidditch performance improves, his magic improves, and with Kyle by his side talking about all the things that Cartman has done to piss him off and Kenny coming up with ways to get back at him for it, life starts to look like worth living again.

**SECOND SUMMER**

This summer Kenny does not come with them, saying he's needed at home. He hasn't told Stan and Kyle much about his parents, besides that they're Muggles and poor, but Stan and Kyle have a shared suspicion that there's something up with his family. Nonetheless, there's not much they can do as a couple of thirteen-year-olds, so they just hug Kenny on the platform and wish him luck.

Without Kenny around that summer, they're forced to spend more time with Cartman. Wendy is elusive, no longer interested in the whims of boys that linger in their youth. Stan overhears his mother gossiping to his father that Wendy has  _started bleeding_ , and though Stan is familiar with that term through his older sister—a moody Ravenclaw that keeps to herself and spends the summer writing letters to her fat Ravenclaw boyfriend, her emaciated owl struggling with the weight and the smell of the perfumed parchment—he still thinks it sounds sinister, panics a bit when he hears the term applied to Wendy. Since their failed first kiss, Stan's started thinking of Wendy like a proper sister. Stan has no such feelings of fondness towards Cartman, though he does not share in Kyle's overt hostility. Still, having Cartman around complaining about how he can't use magic and boasting about the length of his wand (sixteen inches and stupid-looking in his tiny, corpulent fingers) proves annoying.

The summer is hot, hot enough that Stan chooses to run around barefoot and shirtless like some common Muggle boy. Kyle even trades stiff slacks for shorts, and whenever they can free themselves of Cartman (often by dumping him at the sweets shop) they run to the river and go swimming, then drip-dry in their cramped little cave. They are still young enough that spurts of magic shine through their self-control; sometimes the water around them will sparkle or turn pretty colors in the sun. Stan does not know it at the time, but this will be his last summer of true, carefree youth, smiling at his best friend while they wade in the river, the dark clouds of adolescence too far in the distance to make sight nor sense of.

**THIRD YEAR**

The third year at Hogwarts means electives. Without hesitation, Stan decides to take Care of Magical Creatures. The teacher of the class is the off-kilter Professor Mephesto that seems too cruel to the animals for Stan's sensibilities, but he enjoys the class anyway. The creatures take a special liking to him, flocking to his side and blessing him with any special properties that he may carry. Stan starts to consider not becoming a Quidditch star, as has been his dream all his life, but instead some sort of care keeper. As a third year, he is not that concerned, and pushes the idea from his mind. His other elected subject is Muggle Studies; it's okay, but he mostly took it because he knows more about the Muggle world because of his dad and wants an easy class.

Arithmancy and Ancient Runes are, of course, Kyle's choices. "I would have taken more," he explains to Stan at the start of the year, in the break between their very first and very second classes, "but the other options were pitiful." Stan does not take offense.

Kenny goes for Care of Magical Creatures and Divination. He's not in Stan's Care of Magical Creatures class (Stan shares that with the Slytherins, among them Professor Mephesto's son, who possesses the same predilection for torture.) Kenny seems happy enough, though a little distant from whatever went on last summer. It takes some reigning to bring him back but Stan thinks it's worth it.

On their first trip to Hogsmeade, Cartman jogs through the snow to them, his fat cheeks pink with exertion. "Guys," he says, "seriously, why didn't you wait for me?"

"Uh, because we didn't want to hang out with you?" Kyle looks at Cartman.

Cartman scowls but doesn't say anything. Kyle, too, is quiet, and an air that Stan did not want attached to his first trip to Hogsmeade develops. Kenny and Butters are chatting happily among themselves, but Stan is just sapping all of Kyle's negative energy, not even able to take in the beauty of the small village with the roofs holding bounties of snow and shop windows twinkling with warm light. Stan has maybe romanticized this first visit to Hogsmeade, expecting a magical transformation of some sort to take place.

Cartman drags them to the candy store and spends all of the money his mom had sent him on a huge bag of sweets. He taunts Kenny with it, shoving cauldron cakes into his mouth and talking trash about poor people  _and_  Muggle-borns at the same time. It is at this point that the first trip to Hogsmeade becomes a disaster: Kenny lunges at Cartman and shoves the paper bag filled with sweets down his throat so far he starts to sputter and choke.

"We need an adult!" Stan shouts at Kyle though it's quiet in the village besides Cartman's noise.

"Well, you get one." Kyle sits down in the snow. "I'm enjoying the show."

Stan fishes out the first adult he can find, the grouchy History of Magic teacher Mr. Garrison who likes to use his magic to alternate genders at whim (sometimes in the middle of class.) Garrison gives an apathetic wave of his wand and lifts the bag from Cartman's mouth; another and a rope is tied around Kenny, restricting him from attacking Cartman once again and reducing him to a writhing rope-bound worm.

The Hufflepuff-Slytherin Fight, as it becomes known around campus, is legendary. In Stan's opinion it was all sort of pathetic and sad, but of course Cartman embellishes it ("I fought back! He only got to me because he's a poor scrapper, he doesn't know anything about  _proper dueling_!"), Kyle props Kenny up because Kenny won't do it himself ("Cartman almost died, it was  _awesome_!") and Garrison does nothing to dispel the rumors ("I literally don't care at all.") But this does mean that Cartman and Kenny are both banned from Hogsmeade for the rest of the year, leaving Stan and Kyle alone on their trip, Butters drifting to a Ravenclaw first-year named Dougie he knows from back home without Kenny to tether him to Stan and Kyle.

It is then, after all the drama and the flair, that Stan experiences the magical transformation he'd been expecting when he first went to Hogsmeade. Kyle is going on and on about how glad he is Cartman is banned for the rest of the year and Stan slips his hand into Kyle's when he lowers them from an extravagant hand motion. Kyle's response is to tighten his fingers around Stan's, almost a reflex, but he does not let go. They do stop walking and turn to look at each other; Stan takes the opportunity to put his other hand in Kyle's. He gets a weird feeling that they're about to make a vow, that if Kenny was here he'd be the officiator, but that's stupid; what would they even vow?

"Isn't this place great?" Stan asks, and he means it.

"It's like a miniature version of South Park." Kyle crinkles his nose. "Sometimes I miss the London wizarding community. It was so much more exciting and less stifling."

Stan shakes his head, both to disagree with Kyle's sentiment and get snow out of his bangs. "I think magic is the most real in unexciting and stifling places."

"You're so sentimental about magic," Kyle says, sighing with something like exhausted fondness. He withdraws his hands from Stan's and breathes into them before rubbing them together, though he's wearing thick gloves.

"It's pretty amazing, though." Stan is smiling.

 _This_  incident goes unmentioned as Kyle returns to talking about Cartman and Stan thinks about whether or not he wants to get a drink from the pub. It's nothing out of the ordinary for them, but it fits so perfectly into Stan's romanticized version of his first (proper) Hogsmeade vision that it becomes a favorite memory for him to return to as dark clouds gather over his head and he has to return to the nurse to ask for a stronger dosage of his potion. It's a pocket of something good, sometimes the only one Stan can access.

**THIRD SUMMER**

Stan and Kyle both take vacations during this year. Stan visits his Muggle family for a month, doing summer homework under the cover of nightfall to disguise his identity, his mother complaining to him in private about how cumbersome life becomes without magic. Kyle goes to Israel with his parents, who have ties to the wizarding community in that country. They exchange several long letters about how each vacation sucks equally and what they've heard from Kenny, Butters, Wendy, and other miscellaneous school friends who only write once or twice, like Token and Bebe.

The vacations dominate only half of their summer and they spend their other halves doing what they usually do: Kyle reads and complains about Cartman while Stan flies and waxes poetic.

"I'm so anxious to get back to Hogwarts," Kyle says one afternoon, dog-earing a page as Stan touches down, broomstick clenched in his hands. "It's so boring here."

Stan shrugs. "I don't mind it," he pants.

"I know you don't."

Stan sits beside Kyle in the grass. It's a cloudless day, harsh to look at the sky, and so they look at each other.

"I miss using magic," Kyle sighs.

"You sound like my mom." Kyle pushes Stan and Stan grins, pushing back.

They engage in a proper wrestling match, then; Kyle's book gets lost and smeared with dirt while they tumble and fall over each other. When they were kids, they used to roll down the high hills of South Park, dizzy and grass-stained at the end, and that is what Stan is thinking about: that same feeling of no gravity in his stomach, his head spinning, everything blue and green as they emerge, panting, from the rowdiness.

"Where's my book? My mother will kill me—"

"Where's my broom? My father will kill me—"

And so summer peels away.

**FOURTH YEAR**

The biggest change that comes with their fourth year is that Kenny's sister, Karen, arrives at Hogwarts. It's not unheard of to have two magical children in the same Muggle family, but it is rare, and Karen is wide-eyed and scrawny while in line with the other first years waiting for the Sorting Hat. She's sorted into Ravenclaw; Stan claps extra hard for her and hears Kenny holler from the Hufflepuff table.

In Defense Against the Dark Arts, the only class that mixes students from all four houses as some sort of solidarity thing following some war or the other, they learn about Patronuses. Their professor warns them that, at their skill level, the majority of the students won't be able to conjure one, but it's worth a try anyway as a bit of a break in the busy school year. Kyle tries and tries but cannot produce one; a silvery, fat cat ejaculates from Cartman's wand on his first try, and Kyle spends the rest of the class fuming in a corner and talking with Bebe. Stan tries to produce Patronuses with a few different memories: his recent Quidditch victory, the best food he's ever had, the family vacation they took when he was five to the place with the pretty mountains. But it is that day in Hogsmeade with Kyle, that perfect pocket of time, that finally produces an almost-grown Golden Retriever puppy with paws too big for its body that pads around the room, sniffing at the few other Patronuses that have managed to crop up (one of them is Craig's, which is a rather unfrightening and skittish guinea pig) before disappearing. Stan feels sort of smug and tries to figure out how to show off to and comfort Kyle at the same time, but something distracts him as he forms his plan: Kenny.

Kenny's patronus takes shape as something Stan has never seen before, but he's fascinated, stopping in his tracks to stare. A creature woven of silk, it seems to be a beautiful young woman in robes, wings sprouting from her back, a wispy halo above her head. "Kenny, what's that?" comes a non-Muggle-born echo, while the Muggle-borns in their Defense Against the Dark Arts class prop their eyebrows.

"It's an angel," he says. With a wave of his hand and a flash of something Stan has not seen before in his eyes, it disappears. "Weird."

Later, Stan chases Kenny down in their usual meeting place: the Divinity tower's stairwell. Kenny is draped across a few steps, twirling his wand around his head, staring up into the ceiling so high it's almost hard to see the top. Stan pads over to him as softly as he can, feeling as if, for the first time, he's intruded upon something. He sits beside Kenny on the stairs.

"Can you tell me about the angel?" Stan asks, because it's all that's been in his head since he saw it: the serene face, the clasped hand, the way her feet hovered off the ground.

"Yeah, sure," Kenny says. He sits up, too, and sticks his wand behind his ear. "We Muggles—we have something called religion. Surely you've heard of it?"

Stan nods. "My dad used to talk about how he was raised Catholic but gave it up when he met my mom."

"Right," Kenny says. "Well, my family  _is_  Catholic. I don't buy into it, myself, truthfully. So that's why it was weird that that was my patronus. But I guess, I don't know, since I was a kid in church I thought of the angels as a protector."

Stan has a nagging feeling that this is not the whole truth that Kenny is telling him, that there's more to this story, but he just nods. "That's fascinating," he says. "So there's like, a God, and stuff?"

"In Catholicism, yeah," Kenny says. "For real? I don't know. Ask your dad."

Stan narrows his eyes. Kenny shrugs.

Stan and Kenny treat the meeting spot on the stairs as a solace (the word always makes Stan think of Kyle, and that's fitting to him), so they're silent for the rest of the time they spend sitting there. Stan considers the angel, considers Catholicism, and wonders how his dad would respond if he wrote a letter asking about it. He decides to send one to his mom instead, asking her to ask for him, thinking she'll be more understanding.

The discovery of the angel coincides with the beginning of a unit on religions in Muggle Studies. Stan is fascinated, taking notes and doodling all the odd gods in the margin of his parchments. He shares this knowledge with Kyle, who is not impressed, telling Stan that he has some Jewish Muggle family in Israel. So Stan pesters Kyle, too, and writes the letter to his mother, and in the span of three months Stan has decided that he wants to be a Catholic.

Kyle has a lot to say on that subject. He likes to bring it up at random, like now, when they're walking together through the halls to get to lunch. "You believe in magic  _and_  God?" Kyle asks, raising his eyebrows. "Don't you think that's contradictory?"

"What if magic  _is_  God?" Stan asks. Kyle laughs.

"Maybe you'll grow out of it," is Kyle's response.

By the time the religions unit in Muggle Studies is done, Stan passing the test with a hundred percent and writing the best essays of his life, his interest dies down. He suffers a depressive episode after a series of Gryffindor losses in Quidditch and poor marks in other classes, returns to the nurse and asks for a stronger dose of antidepressant. She refuses, saying Stan's at the highest possible dose he can take at his age, height and weight, and Stan is livid, suddenly. He forgets all about God and angels and the idea of an afterlife, pulling in a blanket of darkness around him, cocooning.

**FOURTH SUMMER**

Sharon Marsh notices the change in her son when he comes from Hogwarts almost immediately, to Stan's distaste. He'd been quiet on the train, staring out the window, ignoring the bickering between Kyle and Cartman, not even wondering why they were sharing a compartment. When his mother hugs him at the train station, she frowns and asks him what's wrong.

"Nothing," Stan mumbles. He pulls himself from her arms and starts, without another word, to the Floo station near the back of Platform 9 ¾. The past years, his family and Kyle's have lingered together to catch up and chat, get lunch at Stan and Kyle's mutual favorite Muggle restaurant before returning to their homes. Now, Stan throws a pinch of powder into the flames and steps through, muttering his way through his house's address.

He groans when he realizes that he arrives not at his own house, but Wendy's. He should have spoken more clearly but did not have the energy. He decides to leave her house, feeling weird about loitering there, and makes the long walk home in mud. Now that it's stopped raining it's hot. Stan is thoroughly miserable.

Brooms are not rode; trips are not made; homework is not done. Stan lays in bed a lot, staring at the ceiling and listening to his mom and dad bicker over what to do about him. He wonders, sometimes, if they stay together only because Sharon doesn't trust Randy with the secret of wizardry in the real, Muggle world. Then again, at Hogwarts for most of the year, only home for holidays and the summer, he doesn't have as tight a grasp on the idea of his parents' relationship as he did when he was a kid and they seemed like soulmates.

This summer, Stan starts drinking. He's had a few sips of alcohol, magical and not, before, drinking sociably at parties or whatever. Now, though, he takes an entire bottle from his father's cabinet and locks it in the drawer by his bedside table. This decision comes after Stan receives a letter telling him Kyle is to be a prefect; he sends a little note by owl to Stan, who, in the month he's been home, has not seen Kyle more than twice, and both of those times involved Kyle intruding upon the Marsh household to determine where Stan had been. It's not that Kyle's a prefect and he's not that drives him to drink—it's the idea that Kyle is still accomplishing things in a very Slytherin manner while Stan withers away in his bedroom like a locked-up princess in a very not Gryffindor manner. It's a lot of guilt hitting him at once that he is not there for Kyle but also the idea that Kyle does not need him anymore, that drives him to unscrew the bottle and drink.

Towards the tail-end of the summer, when Stan's homework still is not done and his broom collects dust in his closet, his mom sits on his bed and brushes the bangs from his forehead. It's four in the afternoon and Stan is hungover, queasy and achy, half-asleep and sort of dreaming.

"Honey," his mom says. "Can't you just talk to me?"

Stan musters up the energy to shake his head.

"What happened?" his mom says, murmuring this. "I thought the nurse from school—"

"I stopped drinking that shit," Stan spits. His mother flinches at the curse but does not scold him. She does frown, her eyes drifting from his face. "It stopped working," Stan says, more weakly, the back of his mom's hand pressed to his forehead.

"It doesn't just stop working," his mother says. There are heavy bags under her eyes. "It's—why'd you stop taking it?"

"Things started sucking again." Stan wants to roll over but is afraid he'll puke if he tries any movement. "And I asked the nurse for a stronger dose and she said no."

"You were at the maximum." It annoys Stan that his mother sides with the nurse, even if they're both health professionals. She sighs. "Stan, I need you to take it again, or else I'm going to have to take you to a hospital and you'll miss the beginning of Hogwarts."

"What?" Stan asks, bolting up. Well, he doesn't bolt, more gradually comes to a sitting decision, but he doesn't puke and he's proud of himself for that. "That—I can do that? That's allowed?"

"For health reasons." His mom nods. "Of course, you'll be behind on your studies, and it's a very important year, you know, with O.W.L.s coming up and all. And you won't be able to see Kyle, or that friend Kenny of yours, or Wendy, or even Cartman."

"Fuck that!" Stan does not exclaim this so much as whimper it, but he meant to exclaim it.

He does not trade the bottle in his drawer for the bottle of antidepressant; instead they sit side-by-side, twins in size. Recovery does not come all at once, either, and he's unable to start in on his summer homework but he does start riding his broom again, taking it to Kyle's house to congratulate him in person on his prefect appointment.

"Where have you been?" Kyle asks. He looks pissed.

"Sick." Stan shrugs. He can see that Kyle does not believe him. "Do you want to get your broom and go riding with me?"

Kyle does. There's just two weeks left until Hogwarts and they soar over the rolling hills of their little wizarding town. Stan laughs, truly, for the first time since he'd pulled that blanket of darkness around him. He likes to think that he's cast it off, flying at high altitudes with Kyle, letting it fall to the ground never to be seen again, but obviously that does not happen and there's not a physical blanket or anything stupid like that. But, still.

**FIFTH YEAR**

Other prefect appointments include Wendy (by which nobody is surprised), Token (by which nobody is surprised) and Kenny (by which everybody is surprised, except for Stan.) School is difficult, especially with making up his summer homework and the impending O.W.L.s, but Stan can do nothing but trudge on so trudge on he does. Besides, Gryffindor opens the season with an undefeated streak and the Captain, in his last year at Hogwarts, talks about appointing Stan for when he's gone next year.

It's all sort of unremarkable and standard until the Amortentnia. They make the love potion in Potions class, which the Slyhterins and Gryffindors share; Kyle and Wendy are the only ones able to brew it correctly. People flock around their desk to get a whiff of it.

"Mine smells like old books, metal and sandalwood," Wendy says, frowning. "Who could that even  _be_?" She looks at Bebe, who shrugs.

"Mine just smells like the ocean," Bebe says, rearranging her hair. "Like salt, wind and water. That's not very exciting." She, too, frowns.

Stan smells his, and all of the scents are familiar: fresh snow; a perfumed sweat; ink dripping off a quill. He turns towards Kyle, gaping. "Kyle," he says, like the name is brand new, "what do you smell?"

Kyle furrows his brows. "Earth—like, dirt," he says, chewing on his lip. "Freshly sawed wood, I think? And—some sort of animal fur?" He, too, is now gaping at Stan.

"Holy shit," Stan says

"Holy shit," Kyle repeats.

Fresh snow—the day in Hogsmeade, still the only thing that allows Stan to produce a Patronus. Perfumed sweat—running around as children in meadows, shedding their clothes and jumping in a river, the day over the summer they flew over the hills. Ink dripping off a quill—Kyle, messy as he writes an essay by the lake, little black drops of ink staining grass and breaking Stan's heart.

And Stan knows, knows how earth, wood and animals can connect to him, though he assumes it can connect to any other person just like him. But his concoction is so Kyle, so Kyle to the very core that Stan feels he could create another Kyle just from those smells alone, and just,  _holy shit_. Everybody's ignoring them, too busy sniffing the cauldron and sharing what they smell to decipher their own coded love potion, and so Stan and Kyle step away from the crowd in sync, heading towards the supply closet in the back of the classroom.

As soon as they're out of earshot Stan says, "I think we're gay."

"That  _would_  make a lot of sense."

"Should we kiss?" Stan wants to, suddenly. Feels like he's wanted to all his life.

"Not here!" Kyle hisses, his eyes darting to the crowd. "Meet me in the trophy room at midnight! I'm going back now, okay?" And Kyle disappears into the crowd of questioning teenagers, leaving Stan dumbstruck.

The trophy room at midnight is both romantic and not—Stan isn't sure what to think of it. Kyle is already there when Stan arrives, tugging at his hair and examining a century old Wizarding Chess (Kyle's latest hobby) trophy. "Kyle?" Stan asks, and Kyle whips around, his mouth formed into an  _o._

"Stan! I didn't think you'd come _._ "

"That's really stupid of you. Why wouldn't I come?"

"I don't know." Kyle sighs and tugs at his hair again. "You know, I always thought something was up. Like, did you ever talk to somebody else about how our magic would show, like, the most strongly when we were together, and then have that person be like, what, I've never heard of that before?"

Stan considers it. He tends to keep those memories of his magical childhood with Kyle locked inside of him; they seem too pure, too innocent, and like they happened a lifetime away. Like the day at Hogsmeade, they are something he retreats to when he feels the stress of Quidditch and school weighing too heavily on him and the potion seems not to be doing its trick. "Who did you tell?"

"Just Wendy and Bebe." Kyle's ears are turning red. "They said that their magic only showed a few times, really random small things, like this one time Bebe turned her bed into a seashell. And it stopped happening when they got their wands."

"It didn't stop happening for us." Stan furrows his brow. "In fact—didn't it just happen, like, yesterday?" When they were sitting together under a tree, studying, a branch had sprouted a ripe and beautiful peach, even though the tree wasn't even one that produced any sort of fruit.

Kyle nods and says, "Stan," very slowly.

"Kyle," Stan says, in that same manner. "I think—I think it's the universe, like, the very thing making up the universe, magic itself, telling us we should fuck."

Kyle bursts out with laughter, and Stan is bursting too, because this is ridiculous and they're in the trophy room at midnight because they smelled each other's scents in a love potion. Stan takes Kyle into his arms and hugs him while they're still laughing, their chests bouncing together.

"Maybe it's just our sexual tension," Kyle says into Stan's neck, "like, it's just so strong that it comes out as magic."

"Even as children?" It violates Stan's idea of their childhood, adding something like sex to it, and he's furrowing his brow, the worry in his voice making Kyle laugh harder.

Unfortunately, no consummation of their realized romance gets to take place, as in the next few seconds they hear footsteps down the hall.

"Fuck!" Stan hisses, separating himself from Kyle.

"Should we hide?" Kyle whispers, looking around. "There's not really any place—"

"Maybe it'll be, like, a prefect that you can talk out of getting us in trouble." Stan stands in front of Kyle and eyes the door to the trophy room. "Maybe it'll be Kenny."

It is not Kenny, nor any other prefect, but the Head Girl on her way back from a bath. It annoys her to have to stop and discipline them enough that she takes them straight to Headmaster Mackey's office. Mackey is awake, sitting at a desk and staring at the door as if he's waiting for somebody; his head turned unusually large in a magical accident and the younger kids at Hogwarts gossip that it gave him special mind powers or something. Mackey sighs when he sees them and runs a hand against the side of his huge head, wrinkly skin wrinkling more.

"What have you two gotten up to?" Mackey asks. Stan and Kyle have been in this office a few times, mostly for the pranks they liked to play in their first few years at Hogwarts, but they were always accompanied by at least Kenny and sometimes Cartman.

"Studying," Stan says at the same time Kyle says, "None of your business."

They're given separate detentions for the next week; Kyle is assigned to polish the trophies in the trophy room and Stan has to assist Professor Mephesto in cleaning out the animal pens. Stan thinks of it like some sort of apprenticeship. He smells like dung the first time he and Kyle kiss, meeting up in a shadowed corner of the castle after their respective detentions end, and Kyle tastes like he drank enchanted shiner, but still they blush gold at each other, magic curling around them.

**FIFTH SUMMER**

Kenny's return to South Park for the summer is welcome, and this time he brings along his little sister Karen. Stan expects to be sort of annoyed by her, especially now that Kyle is his official, real boyfriend, but Karen is sort of cool. She's bookish and meek but underneath it all kind of resilient, reminding Stan more of a Gryffindor than a Ravenclaw. When Bebe comes to town for a week to hang out with Wendy, Karen hates her.

The other surprising aspect to Karen is that she's a deft Quidditch player. Stan decides to take her under his wing and train her in the ample countryside of South Park as a favor to her and as practice for becoming Captain next year, asking his mom to bewitch painted pinecones to serve as snitches, old basketballs for bludgers and a soccer ball for a quaffle. They recruit Kenny, Kyle and Cartman (who, despite a lot of talk, is a terrible Beater.) Karen makes an apt Seeker: she has good eyes and a small frame that allows for maximum speed and flexibility.

"You know," Stan says to her, passing a bottle of water after a grueling training session with Kyle lounging in a patch of wildflowers nearby, Kenny stretching and Cartman already huffing home, "Ravenclaw is weird when it comes to Quidditch. They're either really good or really bad."

"Why's that?" Karen takes a drink of the water, wipes the back of her mouth and hands it back to Stan.

"Well, they're creative, right? So sometimes they come up with these crazy and really good strategies. But they're also sort of—nerds." Stan blushes, afraid to embarrass her. "So sometimes they're not…athletic enough to pull the strategies off."

Karen shrugs a single shoulder. "I don't care much about winning."

The McCormicks just go straight from South Park to Hogwarts, and Stan is a little sad to see Karen depart from their group to seek out her friends of her own age. Kyle squeezes his knee when they get comfortable in the train, and Stan sinks into the touch, grateful for all the things that will remain the same.

**SIXTH YEAR**

Quidditch is more important than ever in Stan's sixth year. He's captain of the team, now, charged with coming up with strategies that he recruits Kyle to help him design. Karen's the Seeker on the Ravenclaw team, and though Gryffindor beats Ravenclaw in their first match of the season, Stan pulls Karen aside and congratulates her on a job well done. Quidditch trumps academics, and though Stan did decently on his O.W.L.s and is taking N.E.W.T. level Charms, Herbology, Muggle Studies, Care of Magical Creatures and Potions (which he mostly studied hard for so he could end up in the same class as Kyle), he finds his studies slipping in favor of taking his broomstick out for a ride around the castle.

Gryffindor took the Quidditch Cup last year; Stan knows he's expected to lead the team to victory once again. So, when Gryffindor wins the second game, he and Kyle have sex for the first time underneath the bleachers, Stan working through a lot of frustration in all senses. Stan knows he smells terrible, has come to associate terrible-smelling things with romance with Kyle in general, but Kyle kisses him and clings to him with fury anyway, acting as if the Cup has already been won. Cheers are ringing in Stan's ears and he doesn't know if there are still people in the stands or it's all in his head, but it's fitting, so fitting that this is what he hears when he loses his virginity to Kyle.

Afterwards, they lay in the grass. Stan thinks about how when they were kids and less concerned with hygiene, they'd get twigs stuck in their hair and not care at all. "I love you," Stan says, which he can remember saying to Kyle all his life, the words falling in line with the heaving of his chest.

"I love you too, obviously," is Kyle's stupid response. He's lying on his belly, strips of light from the stands above falling cross his freckled back.

"You should get a magical tattoo. Like, connect the freckles on your back and make a constellation that moves with the moon."

"Stan," Kyle breathes his name out.

Quidditch and sex is sixteen-year-old and seventeen-year-old Stan's life, and quite frankly, it's all very nice. He is high, riding his wave of victory and virility, fucking Kyle against cold stone walls while wishing for the comfort of a dormitory bed. He is tempted to go off his potion, feeling so utterly fulfilled, but he has learned his lesson and takes it faithfully. He starts drinking again, mostly during the celebratory after parties to Quidditch victories but always to the point of blacking out. Clyde has made the team this year, finally, and he asks Stan if he can try some of his sleeping aide to help manage his new stress and Stan just tells him to see the nurse and ask for a prescription.

Stan's classes only become an issue on a dismal gray day in late winter. He's on a trip to Hogsmeade and, on a suggestion from Clyde, has rented a room at the pub for an hour so he and Kyle can have sex in a proper bed. It's afterwards, clutching to each other to preserve the body heat they've worked up, when Stan is complaining about his marks that Kyle frowns and says, "I don't like that."

"Well, I don't either," Stan says, "but there's not much I can do about it, is there?"

"Is studying just, like, not a thing in your life?" Kyle makes a face that, if Stan was not lying in a post-orgasmic haze of love for him, would annoy the fuck out of him.

"I  _do_  study."

"Not enough!" The lines in Kyle's face deepen. "Is it the sex? My ass is not worth more than your future, Stan."

"Yes it is." Stan kisses the crease in Kyle's forehead. "And Quidditch teams have started scouting me, it's all good."

"You can't play Quidditch forever. You will get too old for it one day. Then what are you going to do?"

This seriousness is really harshing Stan's vibe. "Rely on you? Fuck, Kyle, I don't know—"

"The bottom line is." This is a statement that Kyle punctuates by sitting up in bed, looking at Stan with a flat expression. "That I am going to withhold this—" he gestures in the general direction of his genitalia—"until you start getting better marks."

"That's abusive," Stan says, not really meaning it. He's sitting up in bed, too, now. "That's, like, emotionally abusive."

"I'm just concerned about you," Kyle says. The Slytherin thing is happening in Kyle's eyes again, so Stan leans forward and presses a chaste kiss to his lips and says,

"Fine, I promise."

Sex is not withheld completely, but some of the time they used to dedicate to frantic humping goes to studying. Stan's not doing  _great_  in school, but he's not doing  _badly_ , and Quidditch nor his sexual appetite does not suffer for it. Gryffindor wins the Quidditch Cup and Stan does not have to repeat his sixth year, so all goes well, he guesses.

**SIXTH SUMMER**

Travelling is the theme of summer once again, except this time Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, Butters, Karen, Wendy, Bebe, Token and Clyde go to a wizarding tourist spot in France for the summer. France's laws are different than the UK's, allowing teenagers to use magic when they're not at school; Kyle contacts the Ministry of Magic about it, who says that, because of their cordial relationship with the French wizarding community at this time, this law extends to any and all visitors in France.

They stay in this kitschy villa-type thing on a beach that Kyle and Wendy have picked out, making plans all throughout their sixth year and fussing over. To Stan, it's a taste of adulthood: he stays in a three-room cottage with Kyle, using magic to wash the dishes instead of doing it himself, making trips to get groceries and holding his beloved at night, listening to the distant sound of waves crashing against the shore and pushing him to sleep.

When he is not executing this domesticity, he and the rest of his friends are doing typical touristy things. The beach is a particular favorite, where the boys minus Kyle and Karen play volleyball (after teaching the rules to purebloods Cartman and Token) while the girls minus Karen and Kyle sunbathe and read. Sometimes the group will split in two, some going shopping while some visit historical wizarding sites; Stan, Kyle, Token and Clyde most often choose the latter. Several pictures are taken and Stan and Kyle bond over making a magical scrap album, their picture-selves holding hands and waving at the camera with big, goofy grins.

They meet a wizard in France that will become a lifelong friend, Stan recognizing this upon their first encounter. He's rough around the edges, a smoker with a smoker's voice, and upon meeting him he introduces himself as "Christophe, but that name is unbearably pretentious, so please call me the Mole."

"The  _the_ and everything?" Bebe balks.

"The  _the_ and everything," is Christophe's response, flashing a yellowed smile. He has the thickest French accent Stan has ever heard, smells strongly of the ocean, and carries a shovel in which he keeps his wand.

The Mole slides easily into their already large group of teenagers and soon enough he is dating Bebe and staying overnight in their villa. Stan tries one of his cigarettes and pukes on the first drag, which makes Kyle laugh at first and then fret over Stan for the rest of the night, insisting he go to bed early and tucking blankets up to his chin.

It is the saddest moment of Stan's life when, a week before his final year of school starts, he has to leave France. "Let's live here," he says, staring out the train window (which is suitably streaked with a summer storm), to everybody but mostly Kyle.

Bebe is the one that responds, though. "One day," she says. She's wearing a necklace that Christophe gave her, a little corked bottle with sand, pebbles and a small seashell, tied to an itchy-looking rope. It's breaking Stan's heart, truly, and he wishes that Kyle would appreciate such a sentimental gift no matter how objectively ugly it may be.

"Sometimes things are better as vacations than as a permanent living situation," Kyle says to Stan later on the night, when most of their train compartment is asleep and Stan is still awake and straining to see something through the darkness of the window. Kyle is petting his hair and pressing a kiss to his cheek. "I wish you didn't get your hopes up about things."

Stan only sighs and reaches an arm out to draw Kyle closer to him. "I know," he says. "I feel very old, right now."

"Me too." Kyle laughs a soft little laugh. "I feel like I'm forty and going to send my kids to Hogwarts, not myself."

Stan turns away from the window, then. It is dark in the compartment, too, the only light coming from an old-fashioned oil lamp situated in front of Stan and Kyle. It's softening the harshness of Kyle's face, making him beautiful and ethereal. Besides Kyle is Kenny, who is snoring and holding Butters, sleeping soundlessly, in his lap in their weird platonic way. Stan draws Kyle into him even more, presses a kiss to the top of his curls, which he got cut and bewitched in France so that they may never be unruly again.

"For my fortieth birthday I want to go on a trip with France, but I want to bring the kids," Stan says, mumbling into Kyle's hair.

"I think France will be terrible in October," is Kyle's response. "Or maybe better, for the lack of tourists? I'll have to look into it."

And Stan knows that he will, as soon as they return. Stan knows that Kyle will spend the next twenty-three years planning this trip to France, looking into fun thing for their future children, now just a vague, genderless and featureless concept, to do. And Stan, filled with love and with his back turned to the window, falls asleep with Kyle half in his lap and wholly in his arms.

**SEVENTH YEAR**

While Stan had been on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, they had generally done great. He and Bebe were some of the best players in the whole school, both scouted by teams from all over Europe, and even their weakest links (like Clyde) weren't so  _weak_. But in Stan's seventh year, something in the planets align (literally—Kenny, who has taken to hanging out with centaurs lately, tells him this) to make the other teams just good enough to beat them, and Gryffindor kicks off the year with a losing streak. Stan is both frustrated and delighted, having personally coached the Seeker of what looked to be this year's best team (Ravenclaw, of course) and still praised by scouts. One of the comes up to him after the game, a burly man from Sweden with a mustache and flamboyant robe, and says, "Kid, you're good, but a good player in a bad team is held back, you know, by default."

"I'm Captain," Stan says, "and I think my team is great."

The guy frowns and does not return to see the next game.

When he is not playing Quidditch, Stan is spending a lot of quiet afternoons in the soft sunlight by the lake or against walls of the castle studying with Kyle for their N.E.W.T.S. They are occasionally joined by other members of their social group, but more often than not it's just Stan and Kyle quizzing each other on vocabulary terms and situations that sometimes turn into bordering sexual role-plays ("You cast engorgio on the only banana left in your kitchen so you have enough to make several pies because you work at a bakery and stock is low; what do you do next?" "Fuck you with it.") or reduce them to giggles ("For a second time, Clyde is assaulted by the Giant Squid, how do you save him from it?") Their ridiculous studying method somehow works, engraving magical knowledge into Stan's mind.

Over the course of the year, Stan and his friends come of age. Butters is first, just a few days into the new school year, and a tradition is quickly formed: they gather food and alcohol from kitchens and spend the night in the Forbidden Forest, camping out. When Kenny's birthday rolls around, the centaurs join them, and Stan finds them delightful company. Their mystic musings about the stars remind Stan of his brief stint with Catholicism, makes him sort of want to take it up again, though he's long since abandoned the idea of God. On his own birthday trip in the forest, he and Kyle wake up in the middle of the night to sneak off and fuck, Stan getting off on being in nature, Kyle getting off on the possibility of creatures lurking in the darkness and watching them.

It is perhaps Stan's favorite year at Hogwarts, even though it seems to drag on forever with the knowledge that after this year, he will be done with school. Everything around him feels already like a picture he's looking at and experiencing through sense memory, last times flying past him. It is something that he is prone to getting tangled in, getting glum about, and when this happens he anchors himself to the present with thoughts of all the things he knows will remain the same: friends, family, magic, Kyle, Kyle, Kyle. On one weepy night he writes a very long letter and coaxes his owl, a seventeenth birthday gift that came flying with the family owl he has named Cecilia, awake in the dead of night so that he may deliver it to Kyle at that moment. (Kyle responds with a letter that expresses both exasperation and disbelief at being awoken at 3:30 in the morning and an all-consuming love and fondness for Stan and his sentimentality, saying that this is the only time that he wishes Stan had been sorted into Slytherin so that he could blow him right then and there.)

Ravenclaw takes the Quidditch Cup and Stan cries. When he starts, he can't stop, everything from the past seven years culminating in this one moment. Clyde's blubbering too, bemoaning the lack of victory in his seventh year at Hogwarts, and though they're crying for such different reasons Stan envelops him into a hug and they sob together. "God, this is gay," Craig says; Stan sees Kyle elbow him in the side, glare at him, and hiss, "This is a very emotional moment, Craig, shut up," and Stan cries harder. After Stan finishes crying he throws up, maybe from all that swallowing of salt and heaving of his stomach, and if everything had built up in him just minutes ago everything is being purged now, Kyle holding back Stan's hair since it's now long enough to go a little past his shoulders and wrinkling his nose but rubbing his back while Stan is sick in the grass.

"You need this," Kyle is saying. "You also need to be out of this school—we all do—but you, you especially, poor Stan."

And so it goes. There is forever a nostalgia tacked onto the end of any education, any transformative experience, and Stan is well aware but also susceptible to this. Kenny shares in it; Kyle is always there to anchor himself to; the year crawls on, both impossibly long and impossibly short, experiences coming and going. Stan passes his N.E.W.T.s with okay grades, is there for Kyle when he stresses in the weeks before. He can't eat a thing at the end-of-year feast, too sick with sentiment, but he holds Kyle's hand under the table like it's a line he's been cast while adrift at sea. And in a way, Stan thinks, it is.

**SEVENTH SUMMER**

Magical development over, Stan is living a life of magical realization. He still gets sentimental over Hogwarts, but weirdly not so much as he was when actually at Hogwarts, and comes to the realization that he's generally a sentimental person. He works through this by making a lot of scrapbooks, which Kyle sometimes help him with, their lives so closely tied together that it's difficult for Stan to find pictures of them apart. (When they are, sometimes they'll make their way into each other's portraits, nine-month-old Stan crawling into Kyle's baby pictures and Kyle appearing alongside the Marshes at Christmas.)

Stan decides to play for the Bigonville Bombers; Kyle applies for some prestigious advanced magical study program in Luxembourg and gets accepted. So a week after their seventh year of Hogwarts ends, Stan and Kyle pack up from South Park and move to the wizarding community in Bigonville, Luxembourg. They get a little flat together and in these summer months they are able to live a quiet life, Stan still training for the team and not yet ascending into celebrity status, Kyle's program not yet started. They purchase little curiosities to decorate their flat with, chief among them a purebred Kneazle they mutually adore. In the fall, their lives will resume, but the last summer Stan can associate with Hogwarts is nothing but one of those peaceful pockets of time that Stan has come to idealize and commemorate in his scrapbooks, one that he can draw upon to produce his Patronus, a fully grown and realized Golden Retriever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up is 'An Abbreviated Account of Kyle Broflovski's Attendance at Hogwarts.'


	3. An Abbreviated Account of Kyle Broflovski's Attendance at Hogwarts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been ages since I updated this! I'm hilarious. Anyway, next chapter is Kenny's, and this is Kyle's.

**FIRST YEAR**

Standing in line while the Sorting Hat sings its song, Kyle is jittery and irritated. He wishes Stan were here to hold his hand, but they're arranged by alphabetical order and Kyle is too far ahead to even crane his head around and see him. Instead, Kyle is flanked by his arch nemesis, Eric Cartman, who is whispering rude things about the Sorting Hat in Kyle's ear. Kyle's palms are sweaty; Stan wouldn't mind, he thinks, and it makes him want Stan even more.

The Sorting Hat finally shuts up. Kyle is towards the beginning of the Sorting, his last name of Broflovski placing him in the first ten students, right after a boy named Token Black who gets sorted into Gryffindor. When it is his turn, Kyle sits under the Sorting Hat and grasps the stool with his sweaty palms, resisting the urge to kick his legs, his stomach turning.

"Any preferences, child?" The Sorting Hat murmurs into his ear, though it's perched upon his annoying nest of curls.

"Not really," Kyle says back. "Just—hurry up, alright?"

And without missing a beat, the Sorting Hat roars " _Slytherin_!"

Kyle is not surprised; both of his parents had been Slytherins when they'd attended Hogwarts years ago. He knows he doesn't have the bravery for Gryffindor, the niceness for Hufflepuff or even the creativity for Ravenclaw. Slytherin is a good pick, but he feels glum as he walks towards the table anyway, shooting Stan an apologetic look. As soon as he sits down between two empty seats near the end of the table, the Sorting Hat announces Cartman as a Slytherin, too, and this is officially the worst day of Kyle's life.

Of course, Cartman sits beside him. "Well, well, well," he says, already reaching to grab a huge turkey leg from a platter in front of them. "Looks like it'll be you and me, Kyle."

"Ugh!" Kyle glares at Cartman and moves down a seat. Cartman, too entranced by the ridiculous amount of food, does not bother to move.

Kyle waits for Stan's sorting, lightly picking at some food in the meantime. Stan wears confidence, but Kyle knows him too well and can see that he's a little nervous as the Hat is placed on him. The Hat doesn't wait to settle in and calls  _Gryffindor_! soon after, and if Cartman wasn't here Kyle would get sort of misty-eyed, because of course. Of course his Stan is in Gryffindor.

The next sorting that Kyle has some degree of emotional investment in is Wendy's, the other person he knows from his little wizarding village of South Park. Wendy, like Stan, is cool and calm as she awaits her sorting; unlike with Stan, Kyle knows her demeanor is authentic. The hat takes more time with her than with Stan, Kyle or Cartman, eventually declaring her a Slytherin as well. She sits between Cartman and Kyle and Kyle smiles at her, so grateful that he accepts her hug, when Stan is normally the only person Kyle will let touch him besides his mother.

Despite the disastrous sorting decisions Kyle's first year at Hogwarts is really not that bad. The worst part is sharing a room with Cartman; he snores and smells and is far too loud for Kyle's likings, so he circumvents this by spending the least amount of time in the Slytherin dungeons as possible, preferring to hang out on the grounds or around the castle with Stan anyway. Sometimes he falls asleep in the common room to avoid going to his dorm out of fear that Cartman will pull some nighttime stunt. The other notable dorm mate is a boy that sort of unnerves Kyle: he's tall, pale and moves like a ghost, speaking with a nasal tone and called Craig.

"Slytherins are such terrible people," Kyle moans to Wendy one night when they're both up late in the common room studying.

"I know," Wendy moans back. "But they have so many great connections." She dips her quill into the pot of ink between them, jotting notes in the margin of her  _History of Magic_  textbook.

Kyle folds his head on his arms and groans. He's tired, but Wendy's right, and tonight is one of the nights where he falls asleep in the common room, waking only when Wendy packs her things and leaves for her dorm.

In the morning Kyle is grumpy and unrested. He and Stan have the habit of taking their breakfasts from the Grand Hall and eating by themselves by the lake and that is what they do today; Kyle sees Stan's concern out of the side of his eyes while they walk.

"Don't they have couches in the Slytherin common room?" Stan asks while they're in the process of setting up their makeshift picnic on the shore, acquainted with Kyle's bad habits.

"No," Kyle says. He sits, cross-legged. "That would be too, you know, comfortable. And practical. Instead they have these rigid high-back chairs that are always cold."

Stan sighs and touches Kyle on the shoulder. "Maybe it'll get better," he proffers, and then he grabs a roll and butters it before eating half of it in one bite. Kyle feels charmed.

**FIRST SUMMER**

It's Stan's idea to invite Kenny McCormick down for the summer, but Kyle is all for it. Kenny has made the first year at Hogwarts all that much more bearable, both by being a friend and by giving Cartman somebody else to bully. For the last month of school, Kenny diverted Cartman's attention so much that Kyle was able to sleep in his actual bed every night, so it's apt to repay the boy, somehow. Kyle's parents refuse to house him because Ike is going through a difficult stage, his magic particularly strong and prone to causing random explosions, so Kenny stays instead with the Marshes.

The first few weeks Kenny stays there, he, Kyle and Stan venture out every day, pushing the boundaries of previous Stan and Kyle explorations. Kyle can tell that Kenny sees something in South Park that Stan does and Kyle does not—his eyes are wide with wonder and he is prone to pausing and just standing in the middle of a road, a pasture, a shop, wherever, his arms spread out, like he's literally taking it all into his body. "Guys, you actually live here?" he says on the first day, to which Kyle can only respond, "Uh, yeah?"

Stan spends a lot of time practicing for Quidditch tryouts and Kenny and Kyle try to help him, but they both know they don't have an adequate amount of skill. This creates a situation in which Kyle and Kenny are left alone together often. Kyle expects this to be awkward, because Kenny was Stan's friend before he was Kyle's and they share something that Kyle can't quite tap into (he swears he isn't jealous), but it's not. When Stan takes to the skies, Kyle gives Kenny a deeper tour of the town, pointing things out that Stan, a lifelong resident, takes for granted.

"This fountain is dedicated to some wizarding hero from a long ass time ago," Kyle says, for example. It's the grandest feature of their town. "They protected Hogwarts in the Battle for Hogwarts. We learned about it last year in History of Magic."

"Yeah!" Kenny is very enthusiastic over this lame fountain, which Kyle was disappointed to see on his arrival to South Park a few years ago. "I love that class."

"Me too." Kyle lifts his eyebrows. "Stan complains about it a lot. He thinks history isn't relevant to the now."

"History  _is_  the now," Kenny says. Kyle looks at him funnily. "So, what else is there?"

What Stan and Kenny get up to when Kyle retreats for alone time to do homework, study, or take day trips to London with his family to see more of their family (his mother refuses to take Stan and Kenny along with them, saying they'll be bored), Kyle doesn't know. But he's satisfied to inform Kenny of so many magical things he's missing from his Muggle days, satisfied to spend time alone with Stan when Kenny flounces off to soak himself more thoroughly in their world, satisfied with this summer altogether.

**SECOND YEAR**

Sitting beside Kenny, Kyle watches the Gryffindor Quidditch tryouts. As a child, Kyle enjoyed partaking in play-Quidditch with Stan and other village kids in the hills and meadows, but he thinks playing competitively would distract him too much from his studies. He knows Stan does not share those feelings and is crossing his fingers and biting his nails at the same time while watching Stan score goal after goal. It's not that he doesn't believe in Stan, he does, and Stan is obviously proving himself—Kyle's been seized by a weird fear that Stan will fall off his broom. Kenny is quiet and focused; Kyle's trying to keep his teeth from chattering.

When it is announced that Stan is on the team as a Chaser, Kyle leaps off the bench he's been sitting on and rushes to Stan, his scarf and robes flapping in the wind. He throws his arms around Stan and beams. "I told you!"

Kenny is slower in coming to Stan but he's there shortly, clapping Stan on the back and telling him, "I did, too."

"Thanks, guys." Stan reaches out an arm and draws Kenny into their hug, too, which now resembles more of a huddle. "Did I do good?"

"You made the team, of course you did!" Kyle claws his hand around Stan's shoulder.

They break apart from their huddle-hug and a girl Kyle only tangentially knows, a Gryffindor named Bebe with wild hair, comes up to them. "Congrats, Stan!" she says. "It'll be cool playing with you." For some reason, Kyle narrows his eyes at her. He doesn't like the cut of her jibe, a phrase that his parents use.

"Dude, what was that about?" Stan asks, screwing his face up at Kyle, after he thanks Bebe and he leaves.

"Oh, nothing. Let's go celebrate, yeah?"

They celebrate by the lake, which is one of their favorite spots, after Kenny steals some food from the kitchens and another Hufflepuff boy, Butters. Butters is nice and inoffensive; Kyle tolerates him. Kyle sticks close to Stan, their shoulders pressing into each other, absorbing all of the positivity and warmth that Stan is giving off in this moment. The water of the lake sparkles, their reflections visible and wavering if they lean forward.

"I've heard there's mermaids in there!" Butters says, clapping his hands.

"That's a rumor," Kyle dismisses. He's still swooning towards Stan, paying a quarter of his attention to Kenny and Butters. "Mermaids are on the endangered species list."

"Don't listen to him, he doesn't know what he's talking about." This is Kenny, holding a half-eaten apple in his hands and looking into the lake as if he could point out a mermaid as proof. "They got taken off of that list, like, three years ago, and Hogwarts is a sanctuary for endangered species. Our Care of Magical Creatures program is, like, internationally regarded, because of the Forbidden Forest and this lake and stuff. There's even Giants around here, and there's barely any of those left."

"Really? That's so cool," Stan says. He and Butters are hanging off of Kenny's every word, and Kyle can't deny that he has some of his attention now, too.

"How do you know all of that?" Kyle narrows his eyes at Kenny. Hufflepuffs, especially the Muggle-born ones, aren't known for being connoisseurs of magical knowledge.

Kenny shrugs. Sometimes his mysterious persona, which Kyle thinks is kind of a front Kenny puts on, wears at him. He shakes his thoughts free and leans into Stan again, happy.

This happiness does not last, at least for Stan, who seems to gather storm clouds over his head as the months go on, the weather gets worse and the Quidditch season becomes more cutthroat. Kyle continues on as usual, dealing with no great changes, sleeping in his dorm and achieving high marks, but Stan is sullen and withdrawn. Kyle pokes and prods at him, in the literal and the figurative sense, but Stan will not budge. Kyle feels like he's starting to wear a permanent frown; this negativity of Stan, so utterly different from what he'd exhibited on the day of the Quidditch tryouts, will start to affect him soon, too. And he can't let that happen, can't let his grades slip, not now with elected courses just around the corner—

And one day in the spring, Stan seems better, if only by a marginal bit. But he'd been on a downward track for so long that Kyle notices it instantly. He stops himself from flinging his arms around Stan as they're sitting in the library—Stan has just cracked a quiet joke about an illustration in a text book, something he hasn't done in months.

"You made a joke," Kyle whispers, wide-eyed.

"Yeah." Stan is a bit too loud for the library, but Kyle doesn't care at this particular moment in time. "I, uh—I went to the nurse and she gave me something."

"That's great," Kyle says, smiling and tilting his head. "It's been working?"

Stan nods. "I don't really want to talk about it right now, I just want to study. My grades are—my grades are really bad, Kyle."

Kyle nods and moves to sit beside Stan instead of across from him so he can assist him in studying. It feels like the sun peeping out from around a cloud, testing to see if it is safe to shine yet, and Kyle does not move his foot from where it rests besides Stan's, safe in their sneakers.

**SECOND SUMMER**

Kyle feels a little guilty that he's so glad Kenny isn't here in South Park this summer at first, but that quickly fades away after he realizes that a lack of Kenny means a surplus of the already bountiful Cartman, and he starts to yearn for Kenny's presence. Sure, he might not get as much Stan, but he also wouldn't get as much Cartman, and that's a bargain Kyle would be willing to make. He's grown thoroughly sick of Cartman at school, his tolerance all used up, and any comment is enough to spark Kyle's temper. Cartman says something about Londoners and Kyle punches him in the face, for instance.

"Dude," Stan says, after this particular incidence, a hand on Kyle's shoulder while Cartman shuffles off to his mother, whining and clutching at his face. "We need to do something about this."

"We can't kill him, Stan!"

"That's—Kyle,  _what_?" Stan's face creases with concern.

"Oh, never mind." Kyle sighs, feeling adrenaline filtering out of his body. He bows his head. "He's just an ass, Stan! I can't stand him! I had to stand him all year at school and I can't stand him now!"

"Dude," Stan says, again, much softer this time and running his hand over Kyle's shoulder. "Let's just ditch him."

So they devise strategies for ditching Cartman: leaving him in the candy store, lying to him that a market has rolled into town, asking their mothers to lie for them as they run off together. Kyle is reminded of those plentiful pranks they played on Cartman during their first year, when schoolwork was as light as everything else in their lives. Now, he and Stan swim in the lake and take turns shoving each other's shoulders under water, laughing loud with their mouths wide, cramping themselves into their little cave and drip-drying. These days of summer are the most magical of Kyle's life, figuratively and literally, sparks in every sense flying everywhere.

**THIRD YEAR**

Kyle chooses Arithmancy and Ancient Runes for his electives. He's disappointed in the lack of academic rigor in Hogwarts's optional choices—Divination, seriously? That's a class that Kenny chooses to take, which pisses Kyle off for several reasons, most of all that it's just so  _apt_. So, in his third year, Kyle starts to consider career choices and post-Hogwarts magical study seriously. Before, when he was younger, it was easy to get lost in childhood, but he's  _thirteen_  now. It's time to plan for the future.

Wendy joins him in this. They spend their afternoons post-classes and pre-dinner in the Slytherin common room when Stan and Bebe are otherwise occupied by Quidditch drawing up plans on big pieces of parchment, Wendy's cat, which she had received last year as a thirteenth birthday present, darting under their chairs. The cat is short-haired, stereotypically black and named Oleander; Wendy tells Cartman to go fuck himself whenever he starts to make fun of her for being such a typical witch even though he himself has an obnoxious cat with a stupid name. Kyle, on the other hand, takes a liking to Olly, scratching between his ears and only getting a little mad when he leaps over Kyle's homework, jostling his ink pot and spilling it over his Arithmancy problems.

So, one could say Kyle is jovial when he disembarks on his first Hogsmeade trip. The year is going well so far, Stan seems to be doing well, Kenny is doing well, and Cartman isn't that big of a nuisance—

And Kyle promptly has to eat his words because Cartman is jogging, wheezing and pink-faced, through the snow to them.

"Guys," he whines, "seriously, why didn't you wait for me?"

Kyle rolls his eyes and shoot Cartman the most blankly annoyed look he can manage. "Uh, because we didn't want to hang out with you?"

Cartman, the coward, doesn't say anything back. Kyle huffs and doesn't say anything, either. He can't believe Cartman has decided to infringe upon this. Kyle wasn't  _excited_  for Hogsmeade trips, necessarily, aware that it was as quaintly boring as his own South Park, but he'd been looking forward to the chance to spend some quality time with Stan away from the stress of school Kyle can feel on his shoulders sometimes. He can tolerate Kenny and Butters joining them because they're happy to giggle among themselves and stay out of their way, but Cartman is literally such a giant obstacle.  _Merlin_ , this sucks ass.

And of course Cartman drags them to the sweets shop. And of course he taunts Kyle for his diabetes and Kenny for being too poor to buy any sweets. So when Kenny jumps on Cartman like a spider monkey and shoves the stupid cauldron cake he'd been teasing him with down his throat once they get outside, the cosmic justice of it all is sweeter than any confection Kyle could have purchased.

"We need an adult!" Stan is shouting, and though a small part of his heart feels for Stan and his type of omniscient sweetness, Kyle just sits down and folds his legs in the snow.

"Well, you get one. I'm enjoying the show." And he is. Cartman's getting his ass visibly beat, Kenny's skinny limbs are wild and everything and Butter has jammed his whole fist in his mouth and is watching them wide-eyed.

Stan rushes off to find an adult, though, and it ends up being Mr. Garrison, the genderfluid History of Magic teacher. He seems to be male today, wearing an ugly green robe yet no wizarding cap on his bald head. A swish of his wand and Kyle's show is over—Cartman is no longer choking on cauldron cake, Kenny's tied up in a rope, Butters's fist is out of his mouth and Stan is kneeling beside Kyle.

"Dude," Kyle says, looking at him.

"I know," Stan pants. "But it's just—"

"God, you're such a Gryffindor." Kyle, despite it all, can't help but smile at him.

"And you're such a Slytherin!"

Garrison is toting both Kenny and Cartman away, back to the school, with Butters trailing behind him. Kyle knows that they're probably going to cut this trip short for the third years to make some sort of statement. But all Kyle can do in this moment, dumbly, is smile at Stan.

Kyle's suspicions are right; as soon as Headmaster Mackey catches wind of what happened to Cartman, the third years are prematurely shuffled back to Hogwarts. After that, Cartman and Kenny are both banned from Hogsmeade for the rest of the year (which is just fine by Kyle). A while passes before the next Hogsmeade trip; Kyle spends that time reveling in Carman's defeat, which has turned him quiet and scornful in the dormitory.

So on the next Hogsmeade trip, Kyle is once again in high spirits and cannot see any possible impediment to his happiness. "God, this is great, Stan!" he's saying as they walk around the sleepy little village; "Time without Cartman! No need to make excuses or lie or involve ourselves in any sort of trickery because he just! Isn't! Here! This is the best day of my life, Stan. The best day."

Stan slips his hand in his and Kyle beams at him in response, tightening his fingers around Stan's.

"Isn't this place great?" Stan says, his eyes earnest in his wonderment.

Kyle crinkles his nose on impulse, still jittery with happiness. "It's like a miniature version of South Park," he says, looking around. "Sometimes I miss the London wizarding community. It was so much more exciting and less stifling."

Snow flies as Stan shakes his head. "I think magic is the most real in unexciting and stifling places." He is still so earnest, always so earnest; Kyle wants to cradle his head in his hand and coo at him.

Instead, he sighs and says, "You're so sentimental about magic." The urge to touch Stan lingers, so strong that Kyle withdraws his hands and breathes into them to calm himself down.

"It's pretty amazing, though." Stan is smiling. Kyle is charmed.

There's a few beats, and then Kyle says, "Seriously, though,  _no Cartman_ ," and they're walking and talking again.

Kyle returns to this day at Hogsmeade a lot in his thoughts, though he never lets himself examine it too closely. The only thing he will acknowledge about it is that it makes his chest ache, and not in a bad way.

**THIRD SUMMER**

Israel is interesting, Kyle thinks. A refreshing change of pace from South Park. The wizarding community is dashed away in ruins and the desert, their faces covered with thin cloths and robes extra light in the heat. The magic here is different, too, the spell names that not quite matching up with what Kyle's been taught in Britain. He's been to Israel a few times before, has some sparse and scatted memories, and knows that he has Jewish muggle family and that his great-great-grandparents on both sides or something were from this area of the world. But this is the first time any concrete memories are going to form, something he's aware of throughout the entire time he's there, as if this vacation has to be extra special. This is also the first year they bring Ike, meaning they have to travel by Floo through a complicated series of networks because Ike is too little for anything else. That's something Kyle remember from his childhood, too, the vast swirling of fireplaces around him for far too long.

But though Israel is interesting and there is plenty to look at and do, especially now that Kyle is older and given a degree of freedom, Kyle finds that he misses Stan quite a lot. He writes Stan lengthy letters describing, in as much detail as possible, famous wizarding landmarks and some of the Muggle ones, too, knowing Stan will like that even if Kyle finds them mundane and mind-numbing. He also makes sure to tell stories about his cousin Kyle, who attends the Israeli Wizarding Institution and whom Stan has never met but understands through pictures and tales is a most unfortunate person. Kyle resents spending time with cousin Kyle but he is forced to whenever his family visits his, sitting on a stuffed couch in a breezy living room, a ceiling fan swirling lazily above them while cousin Kyle drones and Kyle himself fights sleep away in the summer heat.

Kyle can't say he doesn't like taking camel rides through the desert or studying runes in ruins with a class of fellow tourists (which will satisfy his summer Ancient Runes homework requirement), but he can and will say that it would probably be better if Stan was here. He would like it, Kyle thinks, like the way that worldliness clashes up against the ancient. Kyle decides, laying in his bed at the wizarding inn his family is staying at before falling asleep and thinking about, well, everything, that one day he and Stan will have to visit this place together.

**FOURTH YEAR**

His time in Israel has done nothing for Kyle but deepen the freckles that line his cheekbones and clutter his arms. Somehow he thinks he looks more severe and adult, though, his nose taking on a new sharpness, his eyes a new narrow quality. Cartman, still lost to copious amounts of baby fat, cowers and stammers when he first sees Kyle on the train and, thrilled with this new power, Kyle makes the decision to take the world by storm.

Yet the year progresses as normally as any other, except for one notable instance:

Defense against the Dark Arts mixes students from all four houses. It's a little packed, but it's supposed to be a sign of good faith, related to the Battle of Hogwarts from long ago. Frankly, as Kyle sits in the corner and watches Patronuses that are not his flounce around, he could not care less. He had tried every good memory he could think of, from yesterday to infancy, and still could not produce a Patronus.

"It's okay," Bebe is saying at his side. Wendy is out in the open, trying with all her might; Bebe didn't even bother. "We're fourth years. Realistically, none of us should be able to conjure a Patronus."

"Really?" Kyle asks, giving her a pointed look and physically pointing at Craig's. It's a fucking guinea pig. Then there's Cartman's, a cat as fat as the man himself. And, of all people,  _Butters_  managed one, a quokka that sort of sits on the floor and smiles its stupid smile at all the other Patronuses that have managed to pop up. "Last time I checked, we're all fourth years. And those are Patronuses."

"Don't get your panties in a bunch." Bebe rolls her eyes. "You're, like, top of our class."

"And I can't make a bloody Patronus." Kyle crosses his arms.

They stew in their silence for a little while, Patronuses running amok, until Kyle sees that Stan's produced one. He can't help but be a little bitter even if the dumb Golden Retriever puppy is adorable with its too-big paws, jumping up onto Stan's stomach. Kyle's attention to Stan, though, is quickly swapped with attention to Kenny (along with everybody else in the room) because he's the fifth person to have success and his Patronus is an angel.

Kyle considers himself well-read, cultured. He knows about Muggle religions, knows that the ethereal figure floating in front of Kenny is the modern image of an angel, her hands clasped and wings erect. But everybody else around him is either staring with wide eyes (the non-Muggle-born) or confused expressions (the Muggle-born.) Including Stan, whose own Golden Retriever has disappeared. Something sinks into the pit of Kyle's stomach and makes him feel sick.

Kyle can't get ahold of Stan that night, so he ends up sitting in an empty hallway with Bebe and Wendy, waiting for curfew. They're snacking on sweets a first-year Hufflepuff boy gave Bebe in a futile attempt to woo her, homework in front of them but untouched, icing sticking around their lips.

"Not going to lie," Wendy says, reaching into the box of assorted dessert for a slender piece of chocolate, "I'm disappointed I couldn't make a Patronus."

Bebe shrugs. Kyle suppresses the urge to role his eyes. "Why do we even need one in this day and age?" she asks.

"Bragging rights," Wendy suggests, and she and Bebe laugh.

"What about Kenny's?" The urge to gossip is too strong to resist for Kyle. "You guys know what that was, right?"

Bebe shakes her head while Wendy nods; Wendy takes it upon herself to explain. "It's an angel, right? Some religious Muggle thing?"

"Yeah. Considering he's poor, of Irish descent and Muggle-born, Kenny's probably a strong Catholic." Feeling satisfied that his explanation trumps Wendy's, Kyle treats himself to a chocolate frog.

"So? I've heard of Muggle-born that have really weird Patronuses before. Made-up creatures and robots and that sort of stuff." This is Bebe's contribution to the conversation.

"True." Wendy nods. "Wasn't Stan's sweet, though?"

Kyle narrows his eyes at her. He's always suspected she never got over her girlhood crush on Stan. Kyle remembers that era well. He also remembers living in fear that one day Wendy would replace him in Stan's life—even though Stan never showed anything more than a fond tolerance for her—that had released its hold on him when Stan told him that he'd kissed Wendy and thought nothing of it an hour after it happened between their first and second years. Kyle hurries to respond: "Everybody thinks Stan is some meathead Quidditch player, but he's an adept wizard, too."

"Oh, yeah, definitely." Bebe flips some hair over her shoulder. "He's  _so_  going to become Captain when the current one graduates. There's no contest."

The three nod in agreement.

But over the course of the year, something changes in Stan. Kyle thinks it all traces back to Kenny and the angel Patronus: Stan becomes obsessed with religion, and though his grades in Muggle Studies spike, Kyle does not appreciate this change. Stan is playing fast and loose with his mental health; all Kyle can do is sigh and advise him to stop, but he doesn't listen, of course.

So Kyle is sad to say it, but he grows apart from his best friend during their fourth year. It's not for his lack of trying, but being around Stan proves exhausting. He does not turn Stan away, but he does not seek him out, either. Instead he spends time with Wendy, Bebe and their other friend Red, a stereotypical red-haired hot-blooded Gryffindor who has earned her nickname well. Kyle finds her annoying, especially as a fellow redhead, but the alternative is spending time with a fanatic Stan, so. Cartman does not bother to tease Kyle for his new group of friends; Cartman's been leaving Kyle alone, actually, since Kyle executed an offensive spell a little  _too_  well in Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Kyle also halts his trips to Hogsmeade. Most everybody thinks he's crazy, but he relishes in the time alone. He explores the library and reads all sorts of things, sitting cross-legged on a table out of the librarian's sight, his wand behind his ear. Plans brew in his head like a long-simmering potion as he narrows down what he wants to do with his life. His skin itches and crawls. He talks Wendy's head off with ideas. And he misses Stan, but he puts that negativity in a chest, locks it with a key and plunges it to the depths of his mind, because he will not let that worry impede him, not now, not with O.W.L.s year, not when there is so much to do.

**FOURTH SUMMER**

In preparation for his fifth year, which is surely to be stressful as .s approach, and eaten up with nerves about whether or not he'll get a prefect appointment (he has to, right?), Kyle spends a lot of time this summer by himself in his room, studying. On the rare occasions he decides to enter the real world again, he tries to gather Stan, but finds himself turned away every time. Remembering the descent Stan took the last year at Hogwarts only adds to Kyle's nerves; his mother makes him soothing stomach tonics while Ike zooms around on a toy broomstick in the kitchen, his father away at work in the Ministry. And so Kyle's summer becomes a strange mix of calm and chaos, dancing and darting around with each other like cat and dog, yin and yang.

It is possible Kyle's going a little crazy.

He chalks it up to boredom about where he's at in life and a lack of Stan.

Kyle has unlocked the chest he's buried so long ago and has picked up chewing his nails whenever Stan flashes across his mind. He realizes that the panging he's been feeling might be chalked up to something of a nature he doesn't know how to handle—love in the  _romantic_  sense, love much different than what he feels for Ike or Kenny, love that is all-consuming and soul-burning. That shocks Kyle to his core; he'd never thought of himself as somebody who needed love before; perhaps because it's always been there and now it's not? These thoughts do nothing to abate and anxiety, but they're too difficult to wrangle, so they run rampant and make him dizzy alongside their troublesome friends that remind him of O.W.L.s and each mistake he's ever made.

Attempting to conjure a Patronus becomes his favorite hobby. He stands in the fields by his house, frazzle-haired and wild-eyed, chanting the spell over and over and over again, running memories through his mind. He tries with every memory he can remember, even the bad ones, and when he brings himself home in the evenings he is exhausted, grass-stained and slumped over.

"Shouldn't you be out with Stan?" his mother will ask him as she serves him dinner, pots and pans already enchanted to clean themselves behind her.

"Haven't seen him," Kyle will respond curtly, proceeding to shovel food into his mouth. He's been unusually hungry this summer; he hopes that means an impending growth spurt.

On the day the Hogwarts owl, recognizable by the ribbon tied around its leg, brings the letter announcing Kyle's prefect appointment, he feels immediate relief from whatever the hell has been happening in his head (hormones, maybe?) It's a Wednesday afternoon, a month before Hogwarts starts up again, and Kyle is laying on his back and reading a book in the garden, ostensibly watching Ike as he plays for his mother. When he spots the owl flying overhead he shrieks, flings the book away and tucks Ike under his arm like an American football while he runs into his house. There he sees his mother is already reading the letter; Kyle snatches it from her hands.

"I'm so proud!" his mother shouts, bringing him into her arms.

He and his family go out to London for a celebratory dinner that night and when Kyle returns home he pens a quick letter to Stan announcing his appointment, sending it off with the family owl.

It's a while before he hears from Stan again, and when he does he is shocked. He wasn't  _happy_  about his situation, but he'd done all he could and, as a result, accepted it. There's a knock on the door Kyle recognizes while he's sitting in his bedroom polishing his badge that he answers with his heart beating a little extra hard in his chest. Stan looks thin and sickly, like he's spent time in a hospital ward, but he's wearing a stupid smile and holding his broom. Kyle narrows his eyes, crosses his arms and taps his foot.

"Congrats on the prefect appointment," Stan says. His voice has a previously unknown scratchy quality to it. Kyle purses his lips.

"Where have you been?" Kyle demands.

"Sick." Stan shrugs. The nerve. ""Do you want to get your broom and go riding with me?"

"Ugh, fine." Kyle's broom is collecting dust in the shed and he's not dressed for riding in the least bit but, well, he's missed Stan. Missed any sort of human contact, actually, as he hasn't even seen Cartman all summer, too preoccupied with dreaming and scheming of his own. Or at least this is what Kyle tells himself; the way his heart is fluttering, a butterfly trapped in a cage, is not something he wishes to acknowledge. "You know," Stan says as he stands in the door of the shed while Kyle digs around for hi old broom, "you look like your mom when you're mad."

Kyle hits him with the broom he's just found for that remark.

**FIFTH YEAR**

He kissed Stan.

Stan kissed him.

Sure, Stan smelled like dung, but he tasted like peppermint and pumpkin and all things good in the world when Kyle had probed, tentatively and experimentally, into his mouth with his tongue. It was Kyle's first kiss—though not Stan's—and it was the best possible thing to ever have is giddy thinking about it as he makes his way back to the Slytherin common room, a bounce in his step.

It had been quite the experience getting to the point where they  _kissed each other_. First came the Amortentnia and that smell of dirt, freshly sawed wood and animal fur (Kyle still hasn't figured out which specific animal it belongs to), so strongly Stan it almost made Kyle faint, confirming all his suspicions. Then meeting in the trophy room at midnight, then being caught in the trophy room at midnight, then being assigned detention, and lastly—the  _kiss_. They had met up in a shadowy, untraveled corner of the castle after their respective detentions ended that first night, and they had looked at each other.

"Ready?" Stan had asked; Kyle had nodded.

After the kiss—which wasn't that long in retrospect, though it felt like both a second and an eternity at the time—Stan had immediately said, "We're boyfriends now, right?"

Kyle finally got his chance to cup Stan's cheek and coo, "Right."

That had all happened so briefly ago, Kyle can still feel a buzz in his lips. They'd been nearer to the Gryffindor common room and Kyle had declined Stan's offer to walk him back ostensibly for that reason, but really because Kyle wanted some time alone to stew in his own happiness and contemplate telling Wendy. There's something romantic about the secret, but it would be nice to tell Stan's first kiss who's Stan's last kiss had been. On some level, Kyle knows this is petty. On most every other level, Kyle is filled with glee.

So he pulls Wendy aside as he soon as he locates her in the common room—lounging with a book and Oleander on her lap. A small miracle, the common room is mostly empty and Cartman is nowhere to be seen, though Craig is sitting at a table with his strange, rigid posture.

"Wendy!" Kyle says, when they're on the opposite end of the common room as the others. "Guess what!"

"You and Stan got together?" Wendy raises her eyebrows and brushes Kyle's hands from her shoulder. Oleander, his tail up, walks between their legs.

"What? How'd you know?" Kyle frowns.

"It's the only thing that would make you this happy." She state this in a matter-of-fact way, but there's a small smile on her lips, so Kyle supposes he can't be too pissed at her for the remark.

Kyle finds that life being boyfriends with Stan is basically the same as life before being boyfriends with Stan except now there is kissing and touching; it's a nice improvement. And with Stan insists they go to that stupid tea shop in Hogsmeade that couples love to go to—purely as a "joke" on Valentine's Day—Kyle finds that he unironically loves it.

O.W.L.s end his fifth year; Kyle makes a literal camp in the library, constructing a tent in a corner with oil-lit lamps on soft blankets inside, snapping at everybody that he's a prefect and allowed to do this,  _damn_  it. This ultimately gets his prefect appointment revoked, which is probably the worst thing that's happened to Kyle, ever, but when his . results arrive in the summer he sees that he's passed them all, so. His fifth year is a mixed and blind bag and, when he reaches into it for the purpose of remembering, he is always surprised to see what he grabs.

**FIFTH SUMMER**

This time when the McCormicks come to visit, Kenny and his little sister Karen stay with the Broflovskis. Their spacious house provides ample room for them and, to Kyle's surprise, they are perfect house guests: Kenny likes to help his mother cook and clean while Karen is quiet and barely noticeable, out of the house to play Quidditch with Stan most of the time. On occasion Kyle, Kenny and Cartman (unfortunately) join Karen and Stan, but Quidditch is fast to exhaust them and leave them lounging on the ground below while Stan and Karen train for  _hours_. Cartman sulks off by himself.

Sometime, though, Stan, Kyle and Kenny will take to the roof of Kyle's house, laying on their back and looking up at the stars, dusting off their Astronomy knowledge. Kyle starts to yearn for the ability to use magic in his everyday life away from school, for convenience and for the idea of it, and when he expresses this to Stan and Kenny on the roof, they sympathize. Kyle is not an inherently sentimental person as Stan and Kenny are, he does not wan nostalgic or wax poetic, but when he lays on the roof and looks at the stars he finds himself overwhelmed, pinned by the knowledge that he is a small part in a vast and—dare he admit it— _beautiful_  universe.

**SIXTH YEAR**

Ike is inducted into Slytherin at the Sorting Hat ceremony; Kyle turns to Cartman and says, "The Broflovski legacy will live on long after yours dies," and Wendy snorts into her hands before scolding him for sounding like a pureblood extremist.

But, more importantly, this is the year that Kyle produces a Patronus. He achieves this by thinking of the first time he had sex with Stan, under the Quidditch bleachers, feeling so filled and fulfilled. His Patronus is a mink, roaming around the Slytherin common room late in the night when he's the only one up, trying to climb up the stone walls and darting under chairs.

"Holy shit," Kyle whispers. He dashes to grab a piece of parchment and write a note to Stan, then feels stupid, as he doesn't have an owl and thus no way of getting this news to him. He thinks about waking Wendy up, but that would be ridiculous. He grabs a fistful of his frizzy hair and tugs, unsure of what to do, brimming with emotion. His Patronus seems to sense this, coming up to Kyle and rubbing its thin body against his calf until it disappears.

Kyle is up early the next morning, waiting outside the Great Hall for Stan to appear. It's a Saturday, Quidditch practice day, and Stan is in his uniform, his bangs pushed back with a hairband and hair tied in the tiniest of pony tails. Kyle lunges at him when he sees him.

"Whoa," Stan says, craning back out of reflex.

"Dude," Kyle pants, "I finally conjured a fucking Patronus."

Stan's eyes light up; Kyle laughs and kisses his cheek.

They take breakfast by the lake as they do every other day, Kenny and Butters joining them. Kyle conjures his Patronus to show off; it skitters on top of the water before coming to rest in his lap, looking at him quizzically and disappearing in a whiff of silver.

"That was really neat, Kyle!" Butters says, leaning over from where he sits beside Kenny to look at Kyle better. Kenny, though, offers a noncommittal (and unimpressed) "Cool."

"Thank you, Butters." Kyle straightens out his robes where his Patronus had crumpled them.

Maybe the ability to conjure a Patronus gets to Kyle's head, but Kyle thinks he's justified in that. After all, he's been trying for years to master this spell and is the first one to do so apart from those that accomplished in in their fourth year as far as he knows. Never mind that the Patronus spell has little practical use anymore; never mind that it's an arbitrary measure of skill; Kyle is  _proud_.

Apart from that, his sixth year is marked by a copious amount of planning his summer vacation. It starts when Kyle is lounging on the grounds during a free period, laying on his back in the grass and thinking while watching clouds drift by. His mind wanders to Israel, and then he bolts up, struck by an idea—why not go somewhere this summer? Without his parents? With his friends? It's revelatory; he rushes back to the Slytherin dorms to find Wendy.

Wendy is there as usual, sitting at a table working on something while Oleander curls up in the chair next to her. Kyle picks the cat up, deposits him on the table, and takes his seat.

"Don't be so rough with Olly," Wendy says, not even looking up from her paper. "He's sensitive."

Olly mews noncommittally. Kyle rolls his eyes and says, "Look, I've got an idea."

Wendy puts her quill down and turns towards Kyle. She's trying to look skeptical, but there's interest there, too—previous ideas of Kyle's have ranged from innovative studying methods to elaborate pranks and everything in-between. They haven't always been successful, but they've always been interesting, and Wendy is by his favorite non-Stan recruit. "Oh?"

"We should go somewhere this summer. You, me, Stan, Kenny, Butters, Bebe—the whole bunch." Kyle's on the edge of his seat; he's fighting back childish bounciness, the urge to grin.

Wendy hums, the quill dancing between her fingers. There's a pause, and then she says, "That could work."

"We'll need to choose a place first."

"And the date."

"International or local?"

"What's the fun in local?"

It's glorious. They decide on France for its ease, location and—most importantly—the ability to use magic while there. Kyle writes to the Ministry to make sure that France's laws, which permit minors to use magic, apply to international visitors. They write back with an affirmation, and after that Kyle feels that it's time to unveil his plan to his friends. Stan knew from the day Kyle began planning, but Butters, Token, Clyde, Bebe, all of them, are pleasantly surprised. Except for Kenny, who pulls Kyle aside one weekend while Kyle's studying in the library to talk to him.

"Look," Kenny says, his eyes daring around, "Karen and I are charmed that you invited us and all, but." He pauses, a pained expression on his face. "We can't afford it."

Kyle looks at him cock-eyed. "That's fine," he says. "My family will cover your expense."

The pained expression on Kenny's face, much to Kyle's puzzlement, does not disappear. If anything it only magnifies. "That's sweet of you," Kenny says, a layer of something dark in his voice, "but I don't want to feel like a burden."

Kyle can't help to feel annoyed. He offers charity; Kenny has the audacity not to accept. He understands the concept of pride just fine, but this is a free vacation to France, who wouldn't accept that? Damn Kenny. Kyle chews on his lip and tries to tap into whatever it is that drives him for a solution. Finally, he says, "There are some things that Wendy and I are too busy to do. If you could help out, that'd be great. As far as Karen goes—think of it as a gift. Please."

It works; Kyle gets Kenny to operate as his personal assistant for the remainder of the year in exchange for Kyle paying for his and sister's vacation for France. Stan tells him that he thinks that's manipulative, but as far as Kyle's concerned, it's genius. Besides, he's done a lot for Kenny, from helping him with homework to paying for this vacation, and Kenny's not a Hufflepuff for nothing. The only problem is that he's prone to disappearing, sometimes for a week at a time, but these instances dissipate in Kyle's mind as soon as Kenny returns.

**SIXTH SUMMER**

France is, as Kyle had predicted, amazing. They stay in a villa just off the coast, pairing up for each cottage. Stan and Kyle, of course, have their own, and even though every cottage in the villa is the same, Kyle made sure they have the best location and the best view. Kyle can look out over the kitchen sink and see the water; when he opens the window, the smell of the sea fills the small hut. Best of all, they're allowed to use magic in France. They take full advantage of it, using magic way more than necessary, bewitching things in their house for the fun of it and doing every chore with a flick of a wand.

They kick the vacation off with a communal bonfire on the beach; after that, small groups break off from the rest to do whatever they like. Kyle shops with Bebe and Wendy at the kitschy boutiques and gets his hair enchanted so that it may never be unruly again; Stan goes on tours and visits museums with Token, Clyde and Kenny, parasails with Karen, plays volleyball on the beach while Kyle tans and reads. In the evenings they either prepare dinner by themselves with groceries they buy from the local market, go out to eat with the group, or eat communally in the sandy courtyard of the villa, sitting on logs arranged in a circle with their plates hovering in the air. At night they party. Kyle's never been one for drinking and drugs and rowdiness, but the others embrace it so he does too, the bonfires they build throwing shadows and flickering lights across their bodies. It's magical in a way that Kyle has judged Stan for thinking of things in the past.

After dinner with the whole group one night, they encounter a French wizard, carrying a shovel and smoking a cigarette. Introductions are passed and Kyle is intrigued by the guy, who is named Christophe and leering at Bebe, inviting him back to their villa for the night to party. While there, Stan tries one of his cigarettes and immediately pukes; Kyle takes him back to the cottage and tucks him in for the night, fretting, before coming back out. In the early morning, when the sun's starting to rise and a light breeze flows through the air, Kyle sits on the steps to Bebe's cottage with her and Christophe, drawing designs in the sand with his shoe and saying, "Sorry about Stan. He has a weak stomach."

Christophe laughs; he has a weird way of laughing, throwing his head back and exposing his neck like he's taunting someone to attack him. Kyle watches as Bebe's eyes narrow in on his throat. "It's fine." From then on, Christophe incorporates himself in the group, though he doesn't mingle with the majority.

Time passes by as it always does on vacation, unfortunately fast, and Kyle finds himself packing away their cottage while Stan takes a final farewell trip around the ocean on his broomstick with Karen, Clyde, and whoever else brought one. Kyle feels incredibly nostalgic, folding sheets and shirts, cleaning surfaces and recalling all the various places he's had sex, cooked dinner, did his summer homework, hummed along to songs on the radio. It was all with Stan; Kyle feels paralyzed, almost, by the realization of how much he really  _loves_  him. It's like looking in the mirror and seeing yourself for the first time, becoming cognizant of what you have accepted as true your whole life. And Kyle should feel scared, he should, he's too young and these emotions are too much, but Kyle has always felt like an exception. He's young but he's not dumb; he feels but he is not blinded. And later, when they're on the train and Stan is rambling about magic and children and their future, all Kyle can do is let his heart swell, let himself give in, let himself begin to plan a return trip for Stan's fortieth birthday, because they deserve it, and because this is something that Kyle cannot doubt no matter how hard he tries.

**SEVENTH YEAR**

Just a few days into the new school year, Kenny approaches Kyle during a break between classes. He looks nervous; there's a pink shade growing over the top of his cheeks. "Kyle," he says, "you know you're the best, most anal-retentive person I know, right?"

"Right," Kyle says, raising his eyebrows.

"Well." Kenny straightens up and draws a circle on the floor with his foot. "Well," he repeats, "Butters's birthday is coming up in a few days and I'd like to do something nice for him."

"Okay. Now where do I fit into it?"

"I need you to plan something!"

What Kyle plans is a trip to the Forbidden Forrest at midnight with their friends. They use Kenny to sneak into the kitchens for food and drink and Token and Wendy's privilege as Head Boy and Head Girl to excuse them from any trouble. It goes well and becomes a tradition, even, running through the birthdays with their friends. For Stan's, Kyle and him sneak off to have sex in the woods; for Kenny's, centaurs join them; for Wendy's, they bring Oleander out; for Kyle's, Stan sets off magical (non-harmful) fireworks. It's like they've bottled the essence of what they discovered in France and unleash it every few months for another person.

But fun aside, this is by far the most rigorous year of Kyle's life. He supposes that this comes with taking every class at an N.E.W.T level; his free periods are not so much free as they are stuffed with studying. He's tempted to build a fort in the library again and camp out there forever, but Wendy advises him against it. Instead, Kyle takes to spending time in the prefect's bathroom.

When Kyle was in his fifth year, he loved the prefect's bathroom. If he found it locked when he went to it, he would wait outside until whoever was in there finished, then dash in and stake claim for the rest of the evening. In his sixth year, when he was no longer a prefect, Stan's appointment to Quidditch captain opened the bathroom up for him regardless—they spent many an evening in that tub, relaxing, trying out each of the taps and finding their favorites. In his seventh year, this continues, but Kyle finds himself there on his own a lot, too, taking long baths that never go cold. The water massages the stress, the feelings of insanity, that inevitably arise from taking on such a heavy schedule.

Stan tells him he's crazy; Kyle comforts Stan when emotions become too much for him. Kyle's ability to compartmentalize and Stan's total lack of ability to do would be sort of funny if it didn't make Kyle's heart pang, didn't make Kyle want to wrap Stan up and coddle him from the harshness of reality. But Kyle doesn't believe in coddling; Kyle believes in facing reality, and when Stan is throwing up on the Quidditch field from everything at once, Kyle strokes his back and holds his hair and tells him that he, like everybody else, just needs to get out. Because Kyle loves Hogwarts, loves the education it's giving him, but they've been here for seven years. They're all of age or older; they're all ready to start life in the real world, to put things in motion, to achieve. It is Kyle's deepest, itchiest yearning, the thing inside of him that claims him as Slytherin even when he graduates.

To nobody's surprise, Kyle's N.E.W.T. scores are excellent.

**SEVENTH SUMMER**

Strengthened by his time spent at Hogwarts, convinced of his own value and of others', Kyle is ready to venture out into the magical world. He is to leave South Park with Stan, their destination Bigonville, Luxembourg, where Stan is to play Quidditch and Kyle is to study ancient societies and magical perplexities at the Luxembourg Higher Learning Center of Magic. The idea is to move back to England eventually; Kyle is trying to work the idea of living in London into Stan's head. But for now they are both content in their little flat in Luxembourg, spilling with expensive Quidditch equipment and dusty books, a purebred Kneazle sitting on his throne of a bed in the corner.

Kyle's plans put into action and the future brimming with possibility, he rests easily at night.


End file.
